Injured man rescued from Lovers’ Leap

The 20-year-old man had injured his upper leg while out walking with his family on Wednesday evening, April 23.

The incident happened when the man twisted awkwardly whilst getting up from a wall, possibly damaging ligaments in his leg. He tried to continue on the popular river-side path back to the car park at Dovedale but soon found he was unable to continue and had to stop about a mile short of his destination.

With no phone signal in the steep sided valley, some passers by were enlisted to raise the alarm when they were back in phone coverage and the Derby Mountain Rescue team and a WMAS paramedic and ambulance crew were called to the scene. The paramedic provided initial treatment and the man was then evacuated by stretcher over the mile long route back to the famous Stepping Stones and through the river to the waiting ambulance. He was then taken to the Royal Derby Hospital for further treatment.

The was the third call in a busy period which saw the team join a major search in the early hours of Monday morning for a lost family on Derbyshire’s highest hill, Kinder Scout and attend a woman with a suspected broken ankle late on Saturday evening on Bunster Hill, again near Dovedale.

A team spokesman said:”We’d had a quieter start to 2014 than in some previous years, but now the weather is improving, the number of incidents is starting to rise. It looks as though it could be a busy summer for us if the long range weather forecast is to be believed.”