A SEARCH and rescue team were called into action after a walker fell while climbing with friends.

The Cleveland Search and Rescue Team went to assist a 42-year-old Durham man who had fallen on Raven’s Scar crags near Great Broughton.

The 12 members of the volunteer team were brought in by North Yorkshire police shortly before 9pm on Tuesday, after reports that the man fallen about three metres onto a rocky slab and sustained lower leg injuries.

In an operation lasting about 90 minutes the team treated the man at the scene from their Land Rover ambulance before he was carried on a mountain rescue stretcher to a waiting ambulance a mile away at Hasty Bank.

He was taken to James Cook Hospital in Middlesbrough for further treatment.

Tuesday’s incident was the 16th call of the year for the search and rescue team who usually respond to an average of just 25 calls in a whole year.