Emergency Services


Widdlington Inshore Rescue Service, based in the nearby inland port & fishing village of Widdlington, will be on hand to assist any folkies, campers, boaters etc who may get into difficulties should the forecast deluges ensue.

Points of interest of Widdlington, although it쳌fs designated as a port, it쳌fs no longer on the coast due to erosion of beaches further away, drainage schemes for land reclamation, and silting up of the River Widdle, and the former major harbour & fishing port is now 7 miles from the sea.

As this has been a gradual process, the villagers decided to maintain the lifeboat & its volunteer crew & overcame the problem of launching into the sea from an ever-increasing distance by periodically lengthening the slipway.

Of course, in order that the boat may efficiently traverse the slipway into the water, the angle of elevation of the gradient has also needed to be enhanced, inadvertently creating one of the highest points of the local landscape; Lifeboat Hill.

The hill is presently classified in mountaineering jargon as a 쳌eMarilyn쳌f, that is to say its dimensions are of relative height of 150 metres (492 ft), see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_(hill) for more info.

In consequence of the raised altitude of the lifeboat station, some difficulties have resulted, such as the problem of how the boat[s] can be returned to the station post rescue.

A successful & economical procedure, which overcomes this problem, has been developed using an extensible heavy-duty 쳌ebungee쳌f cord, one end of which is attached to the boat, and the other end to a clockwork mechanism in the boat station.

When the lifeboat is released, the kinetic energy generated by its fall & journey to the sea is stored in the giant spring of the clockwork motor.

As soon as the boat hits the waves, the bungee is detached from the boat & hooked onto a specially engineered eyelet embedded in a gigantic lump of reinforced concrete buried in the ground left over from the beach defences of WW2.

When the boat returns to the shore, the cord automatically engages with its hook & the whole caboodle is whisked back into the boathouse in a trice!

Due to G forces encountered, the crew have to wear protective suits, but they need to don them quickly while still at sea, as once the boat touches land, its just a matter of seconds until the vessel takes off and reaches close to the speed of light!!