From The Times January 9, 2010

The hardy Ripon citizens who defied the elements and the safety curbs

In a small northern English city they looked out of their windows at the snow this week, shivered slightly and then got on with what the British sometimes forget they are good at. They coped.

Hit by the coldest winter for a generation, people remembered that they had neighbours, performed acts of kindness and ensured that life was bearable.

Ripon was granted its first royal charter by King Alfred the Great in 886. It has a cathedral, a cobbled market square, winding streets and a population of 16,500 who have known warmer weeks than this.

It started snowing on December 17. With barely a day's respite since, residents of the city on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales have slipped and slithered along their pavements, dug out their driveways and scraped ice from their cars.

On December 23 it was all hands to the shovel at the cathedral to clear a path for the choir at the carol service. On Monday and Tuesday this week came another 8in (20cm) of snow. Ripon's weekly market was cancelled on health and safety grounds but half of the stallholders shrugged their shoulders, wrapped up warmly and turned up anyway.

Stamping their feet were Ruth and Peter Olley, solicitors turned whole-hog sausage makers. "It's cold but we're up North. We're hard as nails here," Mr Olley grinned. "They may have cancelled the market but we've got products to sell and customers who want to buy."

Treading through the snow was Gwen Lidster, 73, in search of eggs. She recalled: "I was on a farm in the winter of 1947 and it's nothing like as bad as then. We weren't at school for two months."

Sharon Ryan, a postwoman for ten years, sported pink wellington boots as she described the injuries - broken arms and sprained tendons - that have afflicted colleagues. She was still at work, as were staff at Ripon Community Hospital, where the clinical leader, Paula Morris, said operations were "on a war-time footing where everyone mucks in and you discover this lovely sense of community spirit".

At the police station Inspector Steve Breen has 34 police officers to cover 700 square miles (1,800 sq km). Anti-social behaviour statistics surged by 50 per cent. The cause? Every complaint about a thrown snowball is logged as a report of antisocial behaviour. By Thursday, there had been seven.

Of graver concern was the disappearance of 36-year-old Ian Simpkin, a part-time gamekeeper with depression who vanished on Sunday after walking out of his parents' home in the nearby village of Wath. The body of a man, feared to be Mr Simpkin, was found in a wood yesterday.

Many of Ripon's schools closed and grit levels may have been running as low as supplies of bread and milk in some rural food shops, but for George Pickles it was business as usual. Mr Pickles, 73, has been the Ripon hornblower for six years. At 9pm daily he strides in ceremonial uniform to the 300-year-old obelisk in the centre of the market square to blow the horn that has sounded nightly since 886.

"I've been wearing my long johns and one night I thought my lips were going to stick to the horn, but I always know that when I get home there'll be a glass of whisky waiting," he said. "The people of Ripon can rest assured that a night will never be missed."

For at least one company in Ripon the bad weather has been nothing but good for business. Econ Engineering, which employs 180 people, has 90 per cent of the UK's lorry gritter domestic market. This week 4,500 of its yellow lorries have plied their trade and the phone has not stopped ringing. The order book is full and the firm is selling as many spare parts in half a day as it normally does in a week.

Temperatures by 9am yesterday had risen from -12C to -10C, but the end may not yet be in sight.