The TV satellite trucks have all gone. There are no more knocks on the door from troops and rescue workers offering muscle power and sandbags.

But all across northern England, for thousands of people, life is still just as stressful as it was in those dismal hours, weeks ago, when nature burst through the door and turned their lives upside down.

In the Lake District, Julie Fleming’s pretty home is still surrounded by mud and she has no idea when she will be able to welcome paying guests again.

Saved: Residents in Carlisle, Cumbria, are rescued from their homes during last month’s floods

In York, beekeeper Jason Learner lost his bees to the flood, only for someone to pinch the beekeeping equipment he’d salvaged.

In Carlisle, Lee Hendon is on the brink of a nervous breakdown in his home opposite Carlisle United Football Club.

To add to the strain of finding emergency accommodation for his acutely diabetic child, his insurers rang the day before Christmas Eve to quibble with his (fully paid) policy. He and his wife, Vicki, have barely slept since.

For all these people, and thousands like them, the next stage is The Long Wait — as forms are filled, estimates gathered and officialdom plods on at its own frustrating pace.

But their faces all light up when they discuss the one happier aspect of this sorry business: the kindness of strangers, not least readers of the Daily Mail.

Your astonishing generosity has now tipped the £1.5 million mark. And most of that has already been put to good use, distributed by local community charities in Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire and other affected areas.

Travelling through flood zones across the North this week, I have heard umpteen tales to cheer the flintiest old cynic.

Standing in the wreckage of the family home in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, Toni Vanderberg remains deeply touched that an unknown benefactor donated a new BMX bike to replace the one her ten-year-old son, Riley, lost in the post-Christmas floods.

Around the corner, family butcher Nick Devine is equally moved by all the support since the same floods claimed his shop. ‘Several customers turned up to help clear up,’ says Nick.

To cap it all, the shop enjoyed a morale-boosting royal visit when the Duke of York dropped in during his tour of the county last week.

In Cumbria, the Herculean clean-up continues at the Glenridding Hotel, which was hit by three different floods before Christmas.

‘It was like something out of Titanic with tree trunks washing through the kitchen,’ says Selina Ali, 32, whose parents took over the hotel eight years ago.

Even more upsetting was when several Eastern European staff simply walked out without so much as a goodbye. In their place, however, came teams of volunteer helpers from all over Britain.

Selina still wells up at the memory of the retired Liverpool builder who had seen the hotel on TV and rang up offering to refit the kitchen free of charge.

Faced with disaster, it’s gestures like these which keep people going.

And they are typified by the great bundles of donations that Mail readers have sent in over recent weeks.

Around the Lake District, a substantial portion of our appeal has been distributed via the splendid Cumbrian Community Foundation, which has made more than 1,300 grants since the floods began.

This week, those payments reached £1 million with a £1,250 grant to Keith Watson, 33, of Keswick.

Disabled since a cycling accident, Keith would have drowned in his wheelchair had he not been rescued from his ground-floor flat in the nick of time.

He has no insurance, has lost everything and has since moved twice in search of wheelchair-friendly temporary accommodation. He has now found a cottage — albeit up a hill on the edge of town.

The grant will help him with transport, furniture and simple daily necessities like the hand wipes he needs after propelling himself through all this toxic muck.

Equally grateful is Julie Fleming in nearby Braithwaite. The floods wrecked two floors of her house and it will be months before she can revive the bed-and-breakfast trade that’s been her livelihood since being widowed.

In the meantime, her electricity bills have trebled thanks to the dehumidifier blasting away the damp. ‘The worst thing was when we were piling up sandbags and sightseers in 4x4s turned up to watch.’ she says.

But thanks to Mail readers and the foundation, a £1,250 grant will enable her to remove black sludge contaminated with sewage and heating oil from around the house and help with her £2,500 insurance policy excess.

Just a few miles away in Keswick, disabled Odette Atkinson, 65, is mobile once more.

The deluge rounded off a dreadful couple of years during which Odette lost her 20-month-old grandson, Charlie, to leukaemia.

‘My first thoughts were to save Misty [the cat] and all the photos of my grandson,’ she says in the warmth of the temporary flat she shares with husband Simon.

Her voice is cracking with emotion. ‘And at least we got those out. But not my mobility scooter.’

Her grant provided her with funds to buy a £500 second-hand scooter while she waits for her insurance to be sorted out.

Last month, the pretty village of Glenridding, on the shore of Ullswater, became a focal point for the worst of the flooding. Alan Brown’s family-run village store took a direct hit.

There is still grime everywhere, up to waist height. The shop won’t open for a while but a lot of stock — crisps, sweets and drinks — is in perfectly good condition.

Alan offered it to a local food bank. To his astonishment, it was declined because some of it had less than three months until the sell-by date.

‘I was born in the war and we were taught that you don’t waste food,’ sighs Alan, 75. ‘Now I have to put all this in a skip. It’s a pity.’

Still waiting to get home: The Hendon family were flooded out six weeks ago

The family home, next to the shop, endured the same sort of damage and the Browns have received a badly needed grant from the foundation to help clear up the mess. Alan is a donor as well as a beneficiary.

‘When we were on the news, people started sending us money directly. It was so kind but we gave it all to the foundation. We know others are much worse off than us.’

In many cases, it’s not the loss that hurts so much as the uncertainty — as I discover in Carlisle.

All along Warwick Road, there are skips, builders’ vans and piles of abandoned furniture.

Lee and Vicki Hendon and their two young sons had to leave in a rescue boat six weeks ago.

They’d expected to be getting on with repairs by now but, to their great distress, their insurance firm, Swinton, is dragging its feet.

The couple took out the policy years ago. The sticking-point, they say, is the exact distance from their house to the nearest river.

‘They knew the house had flooded before and I told them the river was at the end of the road,’ says Vicki, who works for a local car dealership.

‘We’re not scientists,’ says Lee, 39, a factory worker. ‘Surely it’s down to them to know the risks? We keep trying to find out what’s going on, but we get nowhere.’

A Swinton spokesman tells me the Hendons’ claim is ‘ongoing’ and that it should ‘be resolved shortly’.

Their younger son, Ellis, has diabetes and must be monitored every two hours in the night. His diet has to be carefully managed — which is nigh-on impossible without a functioning kitchen.

With a mortgage to pay on a house they cannot live in, and rental bills on top, they are at their wits’ end.

‘A few months ago my parents moved up here to help with Ellis,’ says Vicki, 36. ‘Now they’ve been flooded, too!’

They are profoundly grateful to Mail readers and the Foundation for help with food and clothing bills.

Through Lancashire and Yorkshire, too, your donations make a difference to lives through charities such as the Community Foundation for Lancashire, the Two Ridings Community Foundation in Yorkshire and the Addington Fund for farmers.

In York, brown water is still lapping at the doors of a few premises.

Readers may recall the photo of the flood pressing against the windows at Plonkers wine bar.

Manageress Leann Williams and her team made a heroic effort to reopen a day later in time for New Year’s Eve. ‘The trouble was most people thought we were closed, so it was a bit of an anti-climax,’ she says.

City council leader, Chris Steward, tells me that the main problem now is perception: ‘What we really need now is for people to visit our shops and restaurants because York really is open for business.’

One of the worst hit areas was Huntington Road, where looting followed terrible flooding. After £7,000 of stainless steel beekeeping kit was stolen from his garden, presumably for scrap, Jason Learner, 27, is now looking for new digs.

A grant from Mail readers, via Two Ridings, will help with the deposit on a new rental.

‘Please say thank you from me,’ he says, then points me down the street where I find Michaela Robinson and her daughter Jade, 23, running a catering van.