STEP back in time with the Mercury's special Those Were The Days feature...

Five years ago: March 8, 2005

Bridgwater man Gavin Dalley returned home after sledging with huskies in Norway for two good causes.

The 32-year-old sledged across 240km of snow and ice to raise money for the National Institute of Conductive Education and Penrose School.

He joined a ten-man team of people across the world to take part in the five-day trek, facing temperatures of –40 degrees C, a far cry from his day job of working for his own company laying laminate flooring.

15 years ago: March 7, 1995

A PIONEERING scheme to put police officers back on the beat was launched in Sedgemoor.

Two unpaid special constables started regular patrols in Cannington and they were followed by 40 more officers in villages throughout the district.

It was the first scheme of its kind in the county and Bridgwater Police hoped it could make a major contribution towards combating rural crime.

The move followed fears by villagers over police cuts in Sedgemoor.

BRIDGWATER and Albion Rugby Club won promotion to southwest’s top division in the Courage League with a 25-5 win over Marlow.

The successful side also reached the semi-final of the Bass Somerset Cup in their bid to win the trophy for the fourth successive season.

Promotion meant the Bath Road team were just one division below their ambition of entering the national league set-up.

25 years ago: March 12, 1985

A £50,000 pedestrianisation scheme for Bridgwater’s Fore Street got the go-ahead – along with plans to move the town’s famous Admiral Blake statue.

The proposals, devised by Sedgemoor District Council planners, were given the full approval of the Department of the Environment.

The Department ignored the pleas of hundreds of townsfolk who wanted the statue of the town’s most famous son to remain where it was on the Cornhill.

The scheme, to include the paving of the Cornhill area and the provision of seating and lighting, would begin in the summer.

BRIDGWATER Police were left scratching their heads after a mysterious find at the bottom of the muddy docks.

While on a training dive, frogmen from the Avon and Somerset Constabulary Underwater Search Unit turned up – along with the obligatory bedsteads, boots and old tyres – a wheelchair!

The chair, plucked from the murky depths by police diver Mark Newton, of Yeovil, set people wondering where it came from and how it came to be at the bottom of the docks.