Later in the afternoon, at 15:41, Greater Manchester Ambulance Service paged us, as the fine weather brought out another spate of “rope swingers”. In this case, a young lad from Farnworth was playing on a rope swing on the steep land that separates the Manchester, Bolton and Bury canal from the river Irwell, in Little Lever, Bolton. Not inexperienced with this particular section of land (the team attended a major night-time Spot Pickup, just 500 yards downstream on incident 51/2001), we knew exactly what terrain to expect and promptly loaded the casualty onto the Bell MR stretcher. Fortunately the lad had escaped serious injury, a fractured arm was suspected by the GMAS paramedic.

The team is noticing an increasingly common factor present in all of the rope swing incidents that we’ve attended so far this year – namely that the casualty tends to let go of the rope mid-swing. This should be considered bad practice, and we highly recommend that anyone using a rope swing should take heed of this information…. for the well-being of all concerned!

Carrying the casualty up a steep bank, utilising a rope haulage / safety line.

Start of the carry of the casualty to the Ambulance.