At 13.48hrs this sunny and very warm early afternoon, we were paged by NWAS (Lancashire) Broughton EOC Air Desk despatcher, regards an incident at Rivington, involving a male with a reported leg injury.

The call was answered by our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE, and with drivers already quickly responding to all three of our vehicle garage locations, a full team call out page was made at 13.59hrs.

Three team Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances went mobile between 14.01hrs and 14.05hrs.

The initial RVP was given as Rivington Hall Barn, where the ‘informant’ was waiting to meet us.

Team member Mike Marsh was quickly on scene at this location, but it was our Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon, who located the casualty site at circa 14.14hrs, on the wooded track between Rivington Hall Barn and the Lower House Car Park area, at Rivington.

A 37 year old experienced male mountain biker, from Blackburn, in the company of his brother, had just set off to spend the afternoon mountain biking together.

Pushing and not riding his bike at the time, whilst going through a gate, the biker stumbled, resulting in a dislocated left knee cap.

Our BM3 vehicle arrived nearby, thanks to the local track network, at 14.19hrs, and casualty care commenced shortly afterwards, including Entonox pain killing gas.

By 14.25hrs, our Team Leader and our BM2 was on scene, at the revised RVP of Lower house Car Park joining other team members who had responded.

At 14.45hrs the North West Air Ambulance ‘Helimed 08’ arrived on scene, flying in directly from Royal Blackburn Hospital having completed a previous incident.

The casualty was loaded onto one of our specialist SAR Alpine Lite Mountain Rescue Stretchers and carried to the helicopter (With thanks to the casualty’s brother for helping us)

At 15.05hrs NWAA ‘Helimed 08’ departed with the casualty on board, for the very quick flight to Royal Preston Hospital.

By 15.30hrs all our responding resources had departed the area, with our BM3 vehicle travelling to Royal Preston Hospital to collect our specialist casualty care equipment which had been used to splint the mans leg.

In total we had twelve team call Out list members and three of our specialist Land Rover Ambulance vehicles on scene. (A further five team members were stood down responding)

On board the NWAA Helimed 08, based at Blackpool Airport, were three crew members.

This incident, as with others in the popular Rivington area, generated much public interest in the work of the Bolton MRT and the NWAA, including a party of interested Scouts from the St Helens area, who were passing by the incident scene at the time, and kindly waited whilst we maintained a ‘safety cordon’ until Helimed had landed.