REMINISCENCES of skating on Ilkley Tarn in the 1950s brought back memories for an Ilkley resident.

Richard Watson, of St Helen’s Way, was recently sent the following article by old friend Diana Crawshaw about skating at the Tarn, on the edge of Ilkley Moor.

Mr Watson, who remembers taking his family there to skate and slide around on the ice, was keen to share her reflections on the once popular local pastime. He asked if global warming had made skating an the Tarn a thing of the past.

Skating on the Tarn By Diana Crawshaw “Is the Tarn bearing yet?” would be the question everyone asked, as soon as the feathers of frost started to streak the water in the dog’s bowl in the garden and people started to fall over on The Grove. Then, at last, word would come.

Off we’d go, dressed in layers of oversized woolly jumpers, scarves, fur gloves and thick socks, armed with flasks of hot soup.

It was often night time. The moors lay, clad in thick white snow and shone in silvery blue moonlight. The silent, narrow road snaked up the moors and as we drew nearer, we could hear the scrape of skates, and see the glow of the old Victorian street lamps which bordered the tarn, and which were lit by a man with a ladder in the early days.

Skates were pulled on and laced up with freezing fingers. I learned to skate on a pair of borrowed 1920s skates, which had boots with pointed toes. They were size six, while I took a size one. My father’s rugby socks helped fill the gaps and willpower did the rest.

In the early days I staggered and slid across lumpy ice, while more proficient skaters like Tommy Walker whistled by, hands in pockets, leaping and twirling, cigarette in mouth. Ducks on the island in the middle looked on, bemused, as fluffy-hatted ladies in tweed skirts waltzed past, making balletic movements in the night air.

When the frost numbed our fingers and toes so that we could bear it no more, we retreated to the edge, to the rustic shelter, to drink hot Mulligatawny soup from the flask and stamp and dance about, as the pain of restored circulation to fingers and toes became unbearable.

Then we would get back on the ice, not wishing to miss the fun and skate, until, clothes wet and noses blue, we slid and sledged back down the road and home for hot cocoa.

The surface of the frozen tarn sometimes became so littered with bits of ice, sticks and stones, or so ridged after fresh snowfall, that the fire brigade would go up and flood it, restoring it to its original beautiful smoothness, ready for another day.