THE rescue of a 13-year-old boy who fell off his bicycle on remote moorland tracks is the latest in a string of emergency callouts for a voluntary mountain rescue team.

The alarm was raised to help the stricken teenager by a friend after the pair decided to cycle between Roseberry Topping and Guisborough Forest, on the northern border of the North York Moors at the weekend.

The Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team responded to the call for help which saw the crew scrambled for a fifth time in eight days.

The incident on Saturday afternoon marked the 50th time this year that the team have helped people lost or injured in remote areas of the region.

Fourteen members of the crew, made up entirely of on-call volunteers, used a Land Rover ambulance to reach the 13-year-old boy from Guisborough.

A Cleveland Mountain Rescue Team spokesman said: “This was quite a tricky incident that occurred a long way from the nearest road.

“The cold, wet weather meant that we had to make sure that the injured boy and the people he was with were all kept warm and taken to safety.”

A friend had guided the team to the scene of the incident where the teenager was treated on the moorland before being stretchered into the mountain rescue ambulance.

He was driven along forestry tracks for a couple of miles before being transferred to a North East Ambulance Service crew waiting in Hutton village, Guisborough.

The Cleveland Mountain Rescue spokesman added that the team believe they will soon surpass their previous annual record of responding to 62 separate incidents recorded in 2013.

Attending a 50th emergency this year also marks a sharp increase in the number of callouts up from a total of 37 responses throughout 2016.

The team’s spokesman said: “Previous incidents during last week saw the team treat two walkers for injured legs, in Helmsley and Roseberry Topping last weekend, and locating one missing walker near Kildale and helping one elderly walker on Roseberry Topping who had cut his head on Monday.”

Around 50 members currently volunteer in the group and are on-call 24 hours a day throughout the year to assist anyone in danger on the North York Moors and are trained in advanced first aid, off-road driving, navigation and search techniques.