My Scarborough Day - with Jon Bateman, chairman of Scarborough and Ryedale Mountain Rescue Team

I’ve now been a member for 12 years.

I mostly work from home so am usually available for call-outs, and my day job working in cancer services for the NHS supports my volunteering.

Our team covers the southern North York Moors to Beverley and across to the A1.

We’re not a very mountainous mountain rescue team but we save lives in wild and remote places.

Call-outs mostly come from the police or ambulance service and usually we’re needed because of terrain or weather, for which your average Bobby either isn’t equipped or isn’t available.

When I’m on the rota as incident controller, I could get a text call-out for a rescue or search at any time.

With rescues, we get the casualty to where an ambulance or sometimes the police can reach them.

Occasionally we use ropes, such as when we rigged up a harness to rescue a lad who’d got stuck on a Bridestone, or when a terrier was stranded on a cliff ledge one bonfire night in Cropton Forest.

Searches can be complex, and huge numbers are reported missing, including people suffering mental health crises and physically fit dementia-sufferers who can wander a long way.

Sometimes the police need to know where somebody isn’t.

Recently a speeding driver died and his partner was injured when his car flew through the trees, ending in a heap.

Nobody knew if there’d been passengers so we did a line search of woodland with the Coastguard team.

It’s rare now to search for a hiker as many have GPS, and we don’t have the numbers going out ill-prepared like in the Lakes.

We do river searches and were involved in the 2015 Boxing Day floods.

We practise in fast-flowing water and are trained to rescue from vehicles – people get swept away when driving into fords.

I live close to our base at Snainton, which is home to two Land Rovers equipped with rescue and medical kit, a 4x4 minibus ambulance to transport people or carry a casualty in a stretcher, and our control vehicle with IT and comms equipment.

Usually we have 60 to 80 call-outs but in 2021 it was 124.

High visitor volumes cause incidents and one bank holiday we had three on the trot – a broken ankle at Mallyan Spout, someone with breathing difficulties at another waterfall, and a woman having an epileptic fit on the moor.

For rescues I stick on sensible clothes and get out super-quickly but for searches we usually have time to grab a flask of tea and some fruit and nuts.

We train three times a month and have just taken on 14 fresh trainees.

Volunteers must be motivated and available – I find it fun gaining skills and applying them in life-saving situations as a team, in a way you couldn’t individually.

I squeeze in daily exercise, currently road biking as my 14-year-old son’s a fanatic, but this area is amazing for all types of cycling.

Interview: Yolanda Carslaw