Early this evening a body was chanced upon by passing hillwalkers in the vicinity of Pickup Bank Reservoir, Belthorn, Darwen.

This resulted in an immediate response by Lancashire Constabulary officers and the North West Ambulance Service (Lancashire).

At 18:38 the team was paged by NWAS (Lancashire) to respond to this same incident, being asked to RV at Belthorn Road, Belthorn.

In total 22 team members attended to discover that sadly NWAS ambulance staff had declared that the male involved was dead on scene.

Team members make their way to the scene of the incident, carrying a stretcher to evacuate the body.

The location of the body was on the steep wooded slopes of the main inlet stream to Pickup Bank reservoir and the specialist evacuation skills of the team were called upon by the ambulance and police present to recover the body.

As shown on this picture, the location of the casualty was in a difficult to access location.

This involved a stretcher carry of 1km across a small river and steep ground to the waiting Police and undertaker’s vehicle on Belthorn Road.

The team’s involvement in this incident concluded at 21:45.