ONE of the biggest blows for tourism was the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, which closed swathes of countryside and was devastating for many attractions.

Many businesses were forced to battle the crisis, one of which was North Yorkshire ice cream maker Brymor, which employed innovative thinking and has come back as strong as ever as it seeks to capitalise in the county's tourism market.

The company makes ice cream and other products using milk from a pedigree herd of Guernsey cattle on the family farm near Jervaulx, in Wensleydale, also running a successful ice cream parlour on the site.

For ten weeks during the foot-and-mouth crisis, the parlour had to close, so the Moore family opened an ice cream parlour in Masham Town Hall, in the Dales.

Brymor founder Brian Moore said: "It went quite well, but, of course, it didn't do as well as we did at Jervaulx. It kept the staff in employment."

The company was affected in other ways because many of its wholesale customers were closed as well, but the company found that, once the crisis was over, people were soon coming back to the parlour at Jervaulx.

Today, those hard times are a distant memory. Mr Moore said: "Even when it was at its height, people were coming up the drive. We were saying we were closed, but they said they only wanted an ice cream. They didn't seem to get what was going on."