Lake District Mountain Rescue Teams urge Lancastrians not to travel to Cumbria to walk in fells
Coniston Mountain Rescue Team said they have again been called out to rescue people who should not be in the Lake District.
In a social media post, the team said people travelling to walk and climb in the Lake District are putting lives at risk, and warned that Cumbria Police had already fined people who have been rescued in recent days and had travelled from Lancashire.
There has been a 70 per cent increase in rescue call outs in December.
The team said: "In line with other Lake District Mountain Rescue Teams, we have again been called out to rescue people who should not be here.
"The whole country is in the middle of a pandemic and there are restrictions on what you can do and where you can go.
"If you are in a Tier 3 or 4 area you should not be travelling except for work and other essential reasons.
"Going for a walk in the Lake District is not one of those reasons, unlike the first lock-down, you are not allowed to travel for exercise.
"People travelling to walk and climb in the Lake District are putting lives at risk, and not just their own.
"If you have the virus and have to be rescued every member of the rescue party will have to isolate for ten days, this will prevent those team members from coming to the aid of other people in distress.
"If any of the team members then become ill or even test positive then other members of their families will then have to isolate, some of those people are NHS workers who will no longer be able to go to work and look after patients.
"We are not being elitists, we are not trying to keep the hills to ourselves, we are trying to look after each other and do our bit to try to control this terrible disease.
"It does not matter whether the government rules are legally enforceable or not, if everyone had followed the rules this situation would have been under control many months ago and we would not be in the situation that we now find ourselves in where thousands of people in the UK have died unnecessarily.
"Cumbria Police have already fined people that we have had to rescue in recent days for travelling here from tier 3 areas of Lancashire.
"Please stay at home if you are told to, it’s very simple."