This year, there have been particularly cold spells in January with sharp frosts, but unlike some other parts of the country, we have not experienced substantial snowfalls. However, this was not always the case as these pictures show.

The print, taken from a painting by Donald Maxwell and reproduced in the book "Unknown Norfolk", dates from 1926 and shows a solitary car being driven down an empty snow-covered Market Street. Of course, there would have been many fewer motors in those days, but no pedestrians or cyclists seem to have ventured out.

Harsh winters were all too frequent in the 20th century, but in the coloured photo, the Abbey makes a wonderful backdrop in this idyllic winter wonderland scene from February 1968.

Undoubtedly the winter of 1963 was the harshest in the Swinging Sixties; the other photo shows Harry Blake, the milk roundsman from Browick Dairy, in a chilling Tuttles Lane. In the extremely cruel winters of 1947 and 1963, water pipes became frozen, there were power cuts, and people struggled to get about.

One February day in the 1970s, with snow falling heavily, we were advised to leave our Norwich office at lunch-time and get home, but the snow-covered road became so blocked we had to ditch the car at Cringleford and endeavour to make our way through the drifting snow on foot. Struggling past abandoned cars and with the Thickthorn stretch being particularly daunting, we suddenly heard a vehicle approaching from behind.

In the gathering gloom appeared a digger, cutting a way through the piled-up snow for a following milk lorry. The lorry driver told us to hop on and eventually, we reached Wymondham in style.

Tobogganing in my schooldays was fun, but some of the winters mentioned here were definitely not!