The recent heat waves have been rare events but probably rarer than we thought!

Looking back through our 21st century archives, anyway, a search for "heatwave" and Whitehaven reveals nothing. Try hot instead of heatwave and we have more photos than we will ever need.

Of all of them, only one has a predictable photo, That one shows Amy Robson,14, enjoying an ice-cream on the harbour on a hot half-term holiday in 2005.

Hot and heat, it seems, is used in many contexts for different occasions.

The three pictures on this page, for instance, demonstrate dance,metal work and someone waiting for a straight razor shave.

Steel fabricator Carl Corkhill needed the heat provided by a welding machine. On this occasion, though, he is dressed from head to te in pink to raised money for Breast Cancer Awareness in 2006.

Then there is the Egyptian mummy who is actually someone posing in a hot towel at a hairdressers offering straight razor shaves.

The photo of Cowper School of Dance, from Whitehaven, sees them in rehearse at Whitehaven Civic Hall

It was hot work for the group who were preparing for the The Association of American Dancing National Troupe Dancing Competition Awards Day, at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool, in 200.

In 2004, for hot curry and a hot place to eat was the newly opened Indian Spice

Take-away in Whitehaven, Abdul Kadir takes an order as another is being cooked.

Firefighters are often considered be"hot" and the flames they fight certainly are. We are not sure what is happening in the photo of the police officer in a fairly compromising position. But in this case, it is just a scene from a performance at Rosehill Theatre.

So there it is. The recent heatwave was to an extent that we appear never to have experienced before but Whitehaven has certainly enjoyed some hot days, hot curries and even a hot hot dog trailer.