IT was a busy weekend for members of Cleveland Mountain Rescue, with four call outs in 24 hours to help search for missing people and rescue two injured walkers.

The first call outs came on Friday night to help Cleveland Police look for a vulnerable man from Marske who was missing and possibly in the Saltburn area. The team split into seven search parties, while the Coastguard and police helicopter were also involved. He was found safe and well, and the team then switched to helping Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team search for a missing woman at Sandsend.

On Saturday morning, the Cleveland rescue team helped ambulance crews with an injured man out walking in Hutton Low Woods, just south of Guisborough. He had suffered a lower leg injury and was treated by team members, given pain relief and then placed in a casualty bag and stretchered to an ambulance.

Finally, just before 4pm on Saturday, police called the team for help with a walker who had a serious leg injury after a fall on the Cleveland Way, roughly midway between Lordstones and Wain Stones. An off-duty doctor was helping the man and a Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) crew were en route.

Team members met at Beak Hills Farm, roughly two miles east of Lordstones Cafe and travelled by Land Rover via farmland to get as close as possible to the scene, together with some team members using their own 4x4s. Having got as far as they could drive, they then walked along the Cleveland Way up to the scene carrying their rescue equipment.

On arrival, together with a YAS paramedic, they stabilised the injury and provided pain relief for the injured man. The casualty was then put in a vacuum mattress and casualty bag, placed on a mountain rescue stretcher and carried by team members a few hundred metres across hilly, difficult terrain until they reached their Land Rover ambulance.

He was then transported back along farm tracks, transferred to the waiting ambulance and taken to hospital.