It's hard to ignore the heartache and sense of shock of the residents of 110 homes - and counting - which have so far been flooded out as a result of the Derwent and the Wye bursting their banks.

This aerial picture of Stamford Bridge clearly shows how the worst flooding in the region since 1931 has taken its toll on the village. Picture: David Harrison

But there is a kind of wartime spirit: We'll all endure and inevitably win through. An elemental fascination for water combines with a determination to laugh because what's the alternative? This is an historic time of real heroes, hardship and bravery. Like Mike Jennison and Dawn Hutchinson who live at the other end of the floodwaters in Brinkworth Lodge, Elvington, but come to the still-shimmering Elvington High Street to re-live their heroics of the night before.

Children delight in crazy welly-walking and carving V's of splash with their new bicycles all around the couple as they recall how they used their powerful four-by-four to pull no fewer than five cars out of the High Street floodwater, including one perched precariously near a beck. Then they took in Mark and Pam Battersby, of Blackburn, Lancashire, who abandoned their moored holiday house-barge on the Derwent when the water threatened to creep up beyond the plimsoll line. "You should have seen it," says gravel-voiced Mike happily. "There's been nothing like this for years."

Ten miles away in Old Malton, firemen are rowing back along Town Street from their dinghy-borne rescue mission empty-handed. Sorry, they tell butcher Douglas Fletcher and his wife, Carol. We simply couldn't find Minnie and Alfie. These are the mother-and-son cats the couple left behind when they snatched up their five months infant, Reece, as the floodwater crept to the first of two doorsteps.

They had moved in to the rented house only last week and now this... But later, as the tide lulled, Carol determinedly waded home above her welly-line and with eight inches of water on the floor, found the moggies hiding in a hole cut in the wall for pipe work repair. Now the Fletchers and cats are staying with Carol's mother in Acklam nearby. "The landlady, Julie, is terrific. She told us not to bother about rent until everything was straight," says Carol.

That's the way it was; still is, while the water laps doorsteps in Malton and Norton, Stamford Bridge and Picketing. People reaching out and helping one another. After rescuing 10 people, mostly elderly, in Town Street, Old Malton, the York-based underwater search unit continues standing by with five men and two boats. Another foot of water is predicted over the next day or two. That could make all the difference ...

The Reverend John Manchester, vicar of Old Malton, found all his parishioners caught up in the disaster and boarded a police boat to check on old people beleaguered by water. "Some left, some didn't and we have made sure that all are all right. There isn't a bed and breakfast to be found in Malton as people have occupied them. The spirit has been marvellous." And this, he says, in spite of the fact that the telephone system has collapsed.

Or has it? "Our phones are still operating," says Roddy Hall, whose office is the last house in Town Street to successfully resist the floodwaters, its front door festooned with sandbags so you literally roll in through the limited opening in a sash window. What an irony. His firm markets his invention, Mudbusters, those sophisticated shoe cleaning devices for which demand soars every time it rains. But this is one time when he's not too happy about the weather. "I don't mind orders flooding in, but not rivers," he says.Flooding failed to stop the Evening Press getting through to hundreds of homes in Malton and Norton, thanks to determined paperboys and girls.

Mike Williams, of Castle News, Castlegate, Malton, said: "We made sure the papers got through by ferrying them around and taking a detour that took at least half an hour. Some of the paperboys and girls have had to wade up to the top of their wellies to get to houses."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.