THE wait is over - at long last Kendal Mountain Rescue Team has unveiled its state-of-the-art new mobile base, funded with the help of generous Westmorland Gazette readers.

Ten months after our Readers to the Rescue campaign topped its £40,000 target, mountain rescuers have finally taken delivery of their expertly kitted-out 4x4 control vehicle.

Hundreds of eager members of the public queued up at the team’s Busher Walk HQ on Saturday to look inside the off-road Ford Transit, complete with satellite, mobile broadband and digital radio technology.

In a poignant gesture, the team has named the mobile base “Eric” in memory of former team member Eric Barrington, whose daughter Diana gave a generous donation.

Kendal MRT chairman Dave Hughes said: “On behalf of the team I must thank The Westmorland Gazette and everyone else who contributed to the campaign, both companies and individuals. We could not have done it without their help.”

“Eric” is equipped with “practically all” the technology found in the team’s Kendal control room. With space for a loaded stretcher, it is designed to get rescuers as close as possible to the scene of a callout.

“It’s like being able to take the base with us,” said team leader Dave Howarth.

“It will make managing callouts a lot easier by having the control point closer to the incident. It will provide a perfect rendezvous point and briefing location if additional resources are needed.”

Diana Barrington said it was “extremely humbling” for the vehicle to be named after her father, who died in 2012.

“I think he would have been extremely proud to have been part of it,” she told the Gazette.

The former prisoner-of-war and building society manager had a lifelong passion for the outdoors. “He lived till he was about 96 and he was able to collect together a little bit of his pension - that was the money I was able to give,” said Ms Barrington.

She still recalls being woken in the early hours by calls for her dad to join a rescue on the fells. While she put the kettle on, her late mother Eileen would make sandwiches and a flask of coffee and send Eric on his way.

“I remember him going out in the 1960s and 70s, always on the wettest, coldest, wildest, most miserable nights. Had there been this kind of technology, it would have made life for him and all the other people searching very different.

“This control vehicle is probably going to make the whole rescue system an awful lot more practical.”

Ms Barrington added: “My mum would have been very proud. It’s just a lovely thing that we were able to help.”