Patterdale Mountain Rescue Relay Autumn 2019

Patrick Relay News from the Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team

Autumn 2019

Full steam ahead!

The Team was honoured to be invited to fill MY (Motor Yacht) Lady of the Lake for a cruise with our guests as part of Ullswater Steamers’ 160th anniversary celebrations. It was a great night and the weather behaved impeccably.

Ullswater Steamers has always been a tremendous supporter of the Team, offering us the use of a boat for fundraising summer cruises over many years. On the evening of 16 July, all five of the company’s Steamers took to the water to celebrate the 160th milestone, as well as the 130th birthday of MY Raven.

Team Leader, Mike Rippon, added: “The cruise was a great opportunity to show our appreciation to all those who support the Team in so many different ways, and to enjoy a remarkable evening with family and friends.”

Over 60 Team members and supporters entertained 40 guests, including Air Ambulance doctors, garage mechanics, outdoor equipment manufacturers and prominent members of the local community, on Lady of the Lake. Invited dignitaries and VIPs filled Raven, whilst the other three boats were busy with Gin and Buffet Cruises, and an event hosted by the Aira Force National Trust team.

“It was a wonderful sunny evening and the fells around Ullswater looked amazing,” said our Chair of Trustees, Chris Sanderson. “We were privileged and immensely grateful to be invited to be a part of these special celebrations, especially aboard Lady of the Lake, at 142 years old, perhaps the oldest working passenger vessel in the world. It was fascinating to see how precision skippering of the fleet, choreographed formations and synchronised blasting of boat-horns came together to make the evening such a unique and memorable event.”

Nights drawing in The Team has already had one call-out to a family caught out by darkness this year so please remember to plan for the evenings drawing in, especially after the clocks go back in the early hours of Sunday 27 October. #BeAdventureSmart.

Visit the Patterdale Mountain Rescue web site at www.mountainrescue.org.uk for latest call outs

PATRICK RELAY l Autumn 2019

Mountain high rescue coverage It’s been a busy summer for TV coverage of the Team with three rescues featured on ITV’s Rescue: River Deep, Mountain High series and then a navigation lesson from Matt Cox, one of our Deputy Team Leaders, on our local Border News programme.

Rescue: River Deep, Mountain High has been an eightpart series featuring a range of mountain rescue teams from England and Ireland, Cairngorm MRT from Scotland and a couple of river and water rescue teams. Broadcast nationally at 8pm on Friday evenings (with a very late night repeat over the weekend), the series has used Go-Pro and similar video footage plus interviews to tell the stories of a range of rescues.

“That particular rescue, in December 2017, also involved Penrith and Kirkby Stephen MRT personnel,” said Mike Rippon, Team Leader, “and the Go-Pro footage clearly showed the challenges of stretchering a badly injured casualty on steep ground in winter conditions. The TV crew interviewed Ed for the programme too and it was great to see him on screen talking about being on the receiving end of rescue.”

The more recent piece of TV coverage came just before the August Bank Holiday, after a couple of busy days for the Team. “I met up with the reporter, Fiona Marley Paterson, at the Rescue Centre,” explained Matt Cox, “and she wanted me to show her just how simple it can be to learn the basics of using a map and compass. I hope it came across well on that evening’s news programme and we’ve since shared the video link on social media to try to spread the word.”

“Once we started filming and collating the Go-Pro footage, we were astounded and deeply moved by the teams’ generosity, heroism and tenacity,” said Series Producer and Director, Bernadette Bos. “I was moved to tears on many occasions seeing the struggles they undertook, the time it took to rescue unfortunate climbers and walkers and to see the gratitude and relief of those who were rescued. I admire all the rescue teams greatly.”

Patterdale MRT was featured in three of the programmes: the first showed a rescue on the Howtown side of Ullswater and involved the RIB (boat) as the best means of getting Team members over the lake while a second featured the rescue of a lost walker on Dove Crag. The final one was the complicated rescue of one of our own, Ed Dowcra, after he fell from an ice climb.

Boat house appeal Lots of our supporters will understand - whether from TV coverage or an Open Day visit - why and how we use the RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) on rescues. Storage at Ogilvie House is great but it’s not the most accessible place from which to access the lakeside and launch the rescue boat.

If anyone reading this knows of anyone who might be able to offer the Team the storage and launching facilities of a boat house on Ullswater, we’d love to hear from them.

Please contact us via the website or at: info@patterdalemrt.org.uk.

If you missed Rescue: River Deep, Mountain High, there are plans to broadcast it again on ITV4 from some time in October.

PATRICK RELAY l Autumn 2019

A busy

Bank Holiday This year’s August Bank Holiday (and the days around it) were particularly busy for the Team and also for our supporters. Team Leader, Mike Rippon takes up the story: We started on the Wednesday (21st) with a man in his 80’s who had taken a fall while walking over Helvellyn with his family. The man was treated at the scene for minor head and hand injuries before being evacuated to hospital by HM Coastguard helicopter.

On the Friday, we were called out to a woman with an ankle injury. It turned out that she had managed to make her own way down from the track above Hartsop, assisted by members of her group.

Saturday began with one of our supporters, Ken Hardcastle, being interviewed on BBC Radio Cumbria to promote our work and the Open Day at the Rescue Centre. Team members and several supporters spent the day giving guided tours and plying visitors with tea and cake and we raised over £500 as well as lots of awareness.

Several families visited us this time and it was great to be able to let our

visitors feel the weight of our bags, learn about our technology and how we work and, in some cases, sit behind the wheel of a Team Land Rover.

The police called us on Sunday to deal with a man who had collapsed after swimming near Howtown and we launched our boat to make speedy progress to the man’s location. He was treated and then transferred to an ambulance for onward transport to hospital. On Bank Holiday Monday, we were called out for a family group that had become lost and cold in the dark after setting out late to climb Helvellyn. Tuesday’s call out was for a woman who had taken her two young sons up Helvellyn but she had then slipped, breaking her lower leg on the descent. Finally (for a while at least), we were called out to an American woman in her 70’s who was walking the Coast to Coast route but had slipped on a rocky section of the path, injuring her ankle.

well equipped.

The Team would like to thank all of those that joined us and donated so generously at our Open Day and we’d also like to thank both Penrith MRT and the crews of HM Coastguard helicopters for helping us over a busy week. Finally, we’d like to wish all our casualties a speedy and complete recovery.

This is quite a cross-section of injuries and call outs and just goes to show how busy MR teams can be at this time of year when there are so many visitors to the Lake District. A couple of these could be said to be avoidable with a bit of planning and preparation but others could have happened to anyone, however experienced and

#BeAdventureSmart - look out for the leaflet The idea for a public safety leaflet was developed in Cumbria back in 2010. With support from Cicerone Press and a national version created in 2017, almost 200,000 have now been distributed

in England and Wales and Patterdale MRT is distributing the latest version as part of the #BeAdventureSmart campaign.

Help from above Team members were recently involved in a training exercise with the crew of an HM Coastguard rescue helicopter. Thanks to supporter, Kate Tomlinson, for the photograph.

“It’s all about encouraging people to enjoy the mountains by planning and being prepared,” said Sean Duffy, one of our Deputy TLs. “If we can get people to think about key things like equipment, skills and the weather before they set off, they can keep themselves safe and we can reduce the number of avoidable call outs that are putting us under growing pressure.”

PATRICK RELAY l Autumn 2019

Remarkable memories Sometimes a donation comes to the Team out of the blue and reminds us of the significance of our work in people’s lives.

Back in July, one of our Trustees, Jacquie Freeborn, received a letter and a donation cheque from a couple in Frodsham who had recently celebrated their Diamond Wedding. The donation came out of the blue and turned out to have a remarkable back story.

Jean Ward had written: “We have just celebrated our 60th wedding anniversary and various people gave us cheques for a charity of our choice. We chose your charity because, 52 years ago, you rescued my husband after a climbing accident. Fortunately, he recovered well thanks to your services.”

“I was stunned,” said Jacquie, “and went back into our archives to find out more. The Team rescued her husband, Eric, after a fall from Tarn Crag on Sunday 18 June, 1967. He suffered head and ankle injuries and needed treatment in hospital after we had stretchered him from the fells. I got back in touch with Jean too and she remembers being at home with two young children and six months pregnant with their third child at the time! To think that they’ve remembered the Team after all those years and wanted to thank us on their special day was wonderful.”

Date for the diary

SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER

Our next Open Day at the Rescue Centre in Patterdale will be from 11am to 5pm on Sunday

20 October. Everyone’s welcome so please let your friends and families know too

New to our collection

Local support Many of the tourism businesses around Ullswater are great supporters of the Team, not only hosting our collection boxes and distributing safety leaflets but also helping to raise funds. Particular thanks go to Hopkinson’s Caravan Park for their continued generosity and to Park Foot Holiday Park. Mark Foudy at Park Foot raised £1000 with his recent Great North Run and owners, Barbara Allen and Fiona Bell, match funded Mark’s total to make it a £2000 donation.

We’ve added two new cards to our collection, just in time for Christmas. One image shows Striding Edge and was taken by Dave Crabtree, a friend of Trustee, Ken Hardcastle. The other, by Deputy TL Matt Cox, shows the HM Coastguard Helicopter and Team members during a rescue on Heron Pike above Glenridding.

Articles for Relay We are always looking for interesting articles or letters from supporters. Please write c/o Patrick Relay Editor, Ogilvie House, Patterdale, Cumbria CA11 0PJ The Patterdale Mountain Rescue Association Ltd. is a registered charity No1063329 and is affiliated to the Mountain Rescue Council of England and Wales.