VIDEO: Cars, bikes and people walking on Lough Owel during big freeze of 1963

Temperatures may have plummeted in recent days, but it is nothing compared to the the winter of 1962/63 when it started to freeze around Christmas day and didn't stop until late February/early March.

Lough Owel, north west of Mullingar, froze over, as it did in other cold spells in 1982 and 2010. This video from 1963 from the Wishful Thinking Historical Archive Series, which features footage from Sean Magee, shows people driving their cars and motorbikes across the lake. It also shows one young man being pulled along by a car across the lake. Health and safety was a concern back in the early 1960s it seems! Go to 2.30.