PERHAPS next year's Tour de Yorkshire will dare to tackle what is believed to be Britain's steepest public road: Chimney Bank at Rosedale on the North York Moors.

In our archive we recently rediscovered this splendid photograph showing motorbikes and sidecars taking on the climb in the days before the road had been tarmacadamed – we would guess it is the 1930s or 1940s.

On the back of the picture, the photographer has written: "A very dangerous section of the track which is only about a foot from the edge."

Leaving the village of Rosedale Abbey, the road climbs 173 metres (or 568ft) in less than a mile, with the maximum gradient being 33 per cent – or 1 in 3, as the old-fashioned signs used to say.

The bank gets its name from the 100ft chimney which was built in late Victorian times as part of the ironstone mines, and railways and tramways, of Rosedale. The mines closed in 1929, but the chimney stood on, a well known landmark, until it was demolished on July 28, 1972.

A COUPLE of weeks ago in this space we published a picture of the old tollbooth, a three-storey block of apartments and shops which stood outside the town hall in Richmond market place until it was demolished soon after our picture was taken in 1947. But what was the van – CPY 391 – parked outside the tollbooth?

Our correspondents had a variety of opinions. For example, Ian Gravestock of Yarm and Edward Brown of Low Row thought it was a Comma van, which was based on the pre-war Hillman Minx. But Derek Noble in Hutton Rudby wondered if it might be a Humber Snipe or Super Snipe van, and Phil Garwood said it could be a Bedford PC model.

Anyone any other ideas?