A VILLAGE which prides itself on its community spirit has held a party to mark the passing of its most traumatic year.

For Thirlby, near Thirsk, North Yorkshire, it was a time to look to the future in the hope no one will again experience anything like the flash floods which devastated communities across the North York Moors in a few hours in June last year.

Houses were inundated, bridges were damaged or swept away and country roads were rapidly overwhelmed after a month's rain was unleashed during a violent electrical storm. But while engineering agencies have done much to restore an outward semblance of normal life to affected communities since then, villager Janet Lewis said there was still a long way to go in offering a co-ordinated system of help to those who had to pick up the pieces in the aftermath.

Mrs Lewis and her husband, Ian, were the last people in Thirlby to move back into their reclaimed home.

"It seems unbelievable that we had that volume of water. You could not hear yourself speak.

"Everyone in the village was helping everyone else and they were just wonderful, like our friends and neighbours who did all sorts of things for us.

"Apart from the obvious damage, you think about the little personal things you have lost, such as photographs, sentimental items and things the children made when they were at school.

"A few people at this end of the village decided to hold a party on the bridge just to mark the recovery from the past year, to put it behind us and look to the future. We certainly hope last year was a one off."