I WAS delighted to see Joseph Hardman’s photograph of me aged 18 on skis (Picture from the Past, December 6) but I have to correct the headline, which should refer to Kirkstone Pass rather than Helvellyn.

The date the photograph was taken was March 10, 1963, the last day of winter sports before the thaw set in to bring that extraordinary winter of 1962-63 to an end.

The story behind the photograph is interesting. Earlier in the year I had been skating on Windermere with my father and friends off Cockshott Point at Bowness.

As we were leaving I spotted a large, silver pocket watch on the ground with Mr Hardman’s name in it, which I later handed in to the police station on the way home.

About a fortnight later I received a packet in the post containing a letter of thanks from him for handing in the watch and some prints of the photographs which he had taken on that day beside the lake showing the crowds on the ice and a local man (Joe Kelly from Droomer Farm, Windermere) mounted on a white horse, which I think were printed in the Gazette at the time.

On the day in question, a crowd of skiers, including me, were at Kirkstone Pass, behind the inn, taking part in races organised by the Fylde Mountaineering Club, when Mr Hardman appeared with his tripod and plate camera, which he set up at the base of the slope.

I introduced myself as his minor benefactor and he immediately asked me to go back up the course and return at speed to give him an action shot.

I duly obliged and, amazingly, given the rather antiquated nature of his equipment and despite my lack of skiing technique, he caught me almost in mid-air.

Wordsworth encapsulates the mood in his lines: 'Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive but to be young was very heaven’.

Happy days!

John Chapman

Skelsmergh