A £380,273 National Lottery grant will bring a mountain rescue team into the 21st Century by providing a new headquarters, reports Michaela Robinson-Tate.

Members of the Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team said they "could not be happier" after learning of the grant from the Community Fund, which will pay for a replacement rescue base at Lowfold, Ambleside.

The modern operational base will house all the team's equipment and vehicles, and provide training and educational facilities.

The team's current building started life as a barn, and has many drawbacks, including corners where members are likely to bang their heads and no access directly on to the main A591.

Team chairman Peter Ennis said the increase in call-outs and their growing complexity had made the inadequacies of the base more apparent.

Mr Ennis said that statistics gathered during the foot-and-mouth crisis had shown that of the 13.7 million visitors to the Lake District each year, half will complete a walk of two miles or more during their holiday, showing the vital need for the mountain rescue service.

The team was involved in two incidents at the weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, 18 members attended Bowfell, Langdale, where three men from Middlesborough, aged 25, 28 and 30, were lost and crag fast, or unable to move up or down the fell side.

The team members searched the area and helped the men down in a four-hour operation.

The following day, six team members were involved in a two-and-a-half hour incident when they were called to Steel Fell at Grasmere where four people from Gloucestershire, aged 56, 57, 60 and 62, were lost in mist and very cold.

They were unable to move and were escorted from the fell side by team members.

Patterdale Mountain Rescue Team was called to Great Meldrum on Saturday afternoon where a 23-year-old female walker from Tyne and Wear had dislocated her knee.

She was treated on the fell by two of the team doctors and taken down by stretcher before being treated in hospital.