A NORTH Yorkshire woman has celebrated her 101st birthday.

Ida Mullin was born in Pickering in 1915, in her grandmother's house by the church in Hall Garth.

She lived in Redcar, but her son John said "she would return to Pickering every school holiday to stay with her beloved granny, and the churchyard became her childhood playground".

Ida went to Saltburn Grammar and spent her leisure time swimming in the sea or with the swimming club.

She met her husband Bill in York. She first saw him when he was diving from Scarborough Railway Bridge into the River Ouse to go swimming. The couple married in 1937. Their first child, Patricia, was born in 1938.

Durign the war Bill served with the RAF in Africa. After the war another child, John, was born.

After retirement in 1970, the couple spent their years divided between sheepdog trialling in Yorkshire and managing a campsite in the south of France. She also continued her hobbies of painting, needlework and gardening.

She spent her birthday at Ashfield Care Home in Malton with family.