This very warm sunny afternoon, a young mother in the company of her sister and their four young children were enjoying a walk in the grassy meadows of Lever Park, Rivington, in the vicinity of Great House Barn, when her five years old daughter suffered a large open laceration to her left leg.

As the emergency services were summoned, a passing couple out walking kindly attended to the young girl, stemming the bleeding and elevating her leg.

At 15.28hrs, NWAS Lancashire EOC Broughton, paged the team for assistance, with attending this incident and also providing local knowledge as to the exact location.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE liaised with NWAS EOC, and sent out a team call out page at 15.39hrs, by which time two of our Land Rovers were being crewed to respond.

During the response, arrangements were made with NWAS for the mother of the injured girl to contact our Team Leader direct, which occurred, with the mother then passing her phone to a man who had stopped to help and had greater local knowledge of the exact location, which was passed to Garry.

Some initially responding locally resident team members arrived at the first given RVP of Rivington Hall Barn, as the exact location was being determined near to the Great House Barn, both locations being in Lever Park.

Arriving first (just) at the actual location at 15.57hrs was our Team Leader, very quickly followed by other team members and responding team vehicles.

What surprised all attending was how calm the young girl was given the nasty and quite serious leg laceration she had suffered.

Our Team Leader immediately asked her to look after a PG Tips ‘Monkey’ toy he keeps in his car, whilst team members irrigated her leg wound with ‘Magic Water’ before dressing the serious wound.

In discussion with NWAS EOC it was agreed the team would transport the injured five year old to Royal Bolton Hospital, along with her mother.

She was transported in our Bolton Mobile 1 Land Rover, which left Lever Park at 16.21hrs and by 16.46hrs the little girl from Westhoughton was at Royal Bolton Accident and Emergency.

All present would like to report how brave this little girl was and what an excellent patient she was.

The following resources were involved in this incident;

• NWAS (Lancashire); EOC Broughton Control.
• Bolton Mountain Rescue Team; Two Team Land Rover Defender Mountain Rescue Ambulances, call signs ‘Bolton Mobile 1 and 2, thirteen team members arrived on scene with two further members stood down responding.
• United Utilities; Full time Countryside Ranger Andrew Ryding – a former long serving Bolton MRT member, called in case access gate keys were required to the Lever Park track system.