TOP: Time Team's Phil Harding officially opens the Yorkshire Air Museum Millennium Challenge

Time Team archaeologist Phil Harding returned to North Yorkshire for another historic challenge at the weekend.

Phil, who was last in the area for the Channel 4 show's live dig in York, joined hundreds of children for the Yorkshire Air Museum Millennium Challenge.

The event was organised by the North Yorkshire Business and Education Partnership and was the start of six-month project for the children involved.

The aim was to inspire the children with ideas for their projects by showing them the museum and running various workshops on a Second World War theme during the day.

These ranged from standing to attention with the Home Guard, alias members of the Victory In Europe Re-enactment Association, to trying out wartime recipes with York woman Mary Beilby. There was also a geophysics workshop, one of Time Team's favourite activities, run by City of York archaeologist John Oxley.

Phil, who officially opened the event, said: "When you look at what this project is all about, there is a hell of a lot of Time Team about it, in that they are dealing with one subject - this site - and setting a bunch of people to research it through documents, maps, written records, artefacts and the aeroplanes."

The groups of children, from primary and secondary schools in York and North Yorkshire, will now work on their projects and will "meet again" in July next year to present their work.

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