Royal visit for Bay Search and Rescue team

His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent has visited the Bay Search and Rescue team in recognition of their work during the floods in December.

The Duke was shown the specialist vehicles the team is able to dispatch before getting into a hagland for a ride on the sand near the team's Flookburgh base.

The haglands can travel over quicksand and snow but in December they were underwater in Kendal, Windermere, Carlisle, Milnthorpe and parts of Lancashire.

The Bay Search and Rescue Team has different equipment to most because of its unique location next to the quicksands of Morecambe Bay.

It boasts the only Air Boat in the UK, after the team leaders brought the concept over from Florida in the USA.

During the floods it was able to get United Utilities engineers through a flooded wood to reconnect Glenridding's water supply, as the army was being drafted in to provide bottled water following 48 hours of the village being cut off.

The team were called to 40 rescues in a week and a half. For the rest of the year up until that point they'd had 50 rescues so almost a year's worth of work came in a short space of time.

They worked continuously for four days and three nights across Cumbria and Lancashire.

And now their work has been recognised by royalty with the visit from the Duke of Kent.