Most of my friends and colleagues know that I've been a volunteer member of Cockermouth Mountain Rescue Team for many years. All team members have to be trained appropriately and must keep their skills up to date. As a team, we go out and practice twice monthly, and today we had a "Special"!!

Whilst we spend most of our time on the mountains and fells in the northwest Lakes, the disastrous floods that wrecked parts of Cockermouth in 2009 proved that as a rescue organisation we also need to be prepared for just about anything. Whilst the Fire and Rescue services would normally be expected to deal with people falling into iced over lakes and ponds, it is possible that we may end up having to deal with just this situation as well. So it seemed like a good idea to work off some turkey and pudding in Bassenthwaite lake today by practicing - seeing as its iced over at the moment.

We have a variety of ropes, stretchers, inflatable rafts, boats and so on designed for water rescue and we spent a couple of hours in near freezing water working out how best to extricate team members acting as casualties.

This done, getting as many of us as possible into the hole was just too good an opportunity to miss....and yes we were in dry suits!