Having saved three night-blind scramblers from Jack's Rake on Wednesday night, Langdale/Ambleside Mountain Rescue Team has felt obliged to state the bleeding obvious: whatever time of year, carry a torch.

'Three intrepid explorers went exploring, at 4pm' reads the team's incident report from Wednesday 9th October.

'But without a map or torch.. so when it went dark they had to stop exploring because there was nothing to see... including the way down... we went a showed them the way... I hope they won't make the same mistake again..'

The rescue, which took seven team members four hours, prompted the team to issue this tip:

'What ever time of year, always carry a torch. You never know when or why you may be delayed. When it goes dark in the hills, it usually goes VERY dark! There's little ambient light unless you are lucky to be out when there is a good moon and little cloud. It's worth carry[ing] a set of spare batteries as well. If you're lucky they'll be the same size as other devices you might be carrying such as GPS. Modern LED torches are very reliable, and batteries last a long time, and it's well worth considering a headtorch in favour of a hand torch, leaving your hands free.'