Dorothy C. Maguire (nee Coles) recalls snowy days at Underbarrow School.

When I think of my 26 years as head of Underbarrow School I can only remember two days when the school was closed because of snow.

My route to Underbarrow took me through Levens village and Brigsteer woods.

Usually Arnside was free of snow; I would encounter the snow on the slope into Levens.

Often my car was the first through the snowy woods where I pioneered my way, and where the occasional red squirrel would run across as I appeared.

I always managed to make it, but sometimes with only two or three minutes to spare, when the children would groan at my arrival, having envisaged a day's holiday.

In my early days in the 1960s we had coal fires, where the children could dry their coats and wellingtons. Some of them had walked two miles across the fields from their lonely farms, such as Bonfire Hall.

Often they would bring their sledges to school and we had merry times in the fields, sledging and building snow-men.

A favourite, in icy weather, was to make a slide in the playground, replenished with cold water.

One child fell and cut her face and had to be taken to hospital for treatment. Everyone accepted that accidents could happen.

One morning, in a blizzard, we were having assembly and singing with gusto 'Onward Christian Soldiers' when the Kendal office rang up to say the children must be sent home. There was no snow when I returned to Arnside!

The school's last winter of 1984-85 was the worst for the snow, when it became so deep I had to stop the night with the Smedley family up Church Lane, where I was made so welcome.

Such happy winters.