FOUR teenagers had to be rescued by lifeboats this evening from the foot of vetical sea cliffs near Saltburn after becoming cut off by the incoming tide.

The four, aged 16 and 17-years-old from the Darlington and Durham area, raised the alarm by telephoning the police who alerted the Coastguard.

Redcar RNLI lifeboats launched at 7.20pm and quickly found the three males and one female at the base of Huntcliff.

The smaller inshore lifeboat went in and picked up two of the teenagers and transferred them to the larger RNLI lifeboat before returning for the remaining two.

All four were cold and wet and were taken back to Redcar where they were checked over by casualty-care trained RNLI crew members.

Once warmed up, they were taken to Kirkleatham police station to await collection by the parents of one of the teenagers.

They became trapped by the tide at the notorious cut-off point near the Ship Inn.

The Northern Echo:

The 365ft high Huntcliff cliffs near Saltburn

Dave Cocks, Lifeboat Operations Manager at Redcar RNLI said: "They are four very lucky young people. They had managed to climb to a point of safety to escape the tide. They were able to telephone the police to raise the alarm, and the police then passed on the call to UK Coastguard who tasked our lifeboats.

"The police arranged for a CCTV camera on the promenade at Saltburn to monitor the young people until we arrived.

"This was a routine rescue we’ve carried out countless times. If they’d checked the tide times the incident would probably not have happened."