THE father of a family that endured a torrid night on the fells after ignoring warnings to stick to lower ground took full responsibility for the mistake and paid a four-figure sum to cover retrieval costs of mountain bikes the group was forced to abandon.

This was according to the owner of the Windermere store that lent the party the bikes and cautioned them against the trip.

The family of six, from outside Cumbria, had planned to ride to the Wasdale Head Inn via Esk Hause and Sty Head.

Paul Noble, owner of Total Adventure, where the bikes were hired, said: “The conditions were horrific.

“They were told that that was too difficult to do.

“(The father) appeared to concede at that point that actually the weather was too bad and they would have to do something low-level.

“When they left the shop we had no doubts that they were not going to try and cross the hills.”

However, the father, who Mr Noble described as the ‘driving force’, apparently had a change of heart, and the family headed into the mountains.

The group became lost and mountain rescuers were called out on August 4 after they were reported overdue.

The party eventually turned up at the inn at 8.30am the following morning, having abandoned their bikes at Broad Crag, part of the Scafell chain of mountains.

Mr Noble said he was later told by one of the teenagers in the party that abandoning the bikes to try and find safer ground had been a matter of ‘life and death’.

A spokesman for Keswick Mountain Rescue Team said: “They did not give a detailed route-plan and had unsuitable clothing for the conditions and took minimal provisions.”

Mr Noble said he had to pay a group of outdoor instructors to help him retrieve the bikes after being updated on the situation by mountain rescuers. Fortunately, the damage to the equipment was ‘fairly minor’.

The father of the family later went into the shop to pay a four-figure sum for the cost of recovery, repairs, and any cancellations necessary while the bikes were fixed.

Mr Noble said the man ‘took full responsibility for what happened’ and was apologetic.

“I wasn’t expecting him to be because his general demeanour had been quite aloof, a bit arrogant,” he said.

“I have never met a guy who - despite being told - walked our bikes over some of the highest of the Lake District’s hills.”