AS YORK and North Yorkshire shiver in the cold snap, we take readers back to the days when winter really used to bite.

Our first picture, from 1958, shows early morning skater Sheila Prickett enjoying the Rowntree Park lake all to herself. Must have been a better way to wake-up than any alarm clock.

The second shot, taken two years earlier, shows a classic Rowntree Park snow scene that could come straight out of an LS Lowry painting. But we are not sure what the two men with the ladder are doing.

The third image jumps to 1973 and shows Bootham schoolboy Guy Mailing in a canoe breaking the ice on a frozen River Ouse. It is rare to see York's rivers Foss and Ouse freeze over these days.

Our fourth picture was taken in 1954, when the road from Gally Gap to Leavening, near Malton, was blocked by 6ft high snow drifts. One snowplough had to be abandoned up there, leaving this monster to come to its rescue.

Updated: 07:27 Friday, January 30, 2004