The record
The Cave Rescue Organisation (CRO) was founded in 1935 in the caving country of the Yorkshire Dales and is recognised as the oldest cave rescue agency in the world. Operating from a depot in the village of Clapham at the foot of Ingleborough, its volunteers answer some 90-100 call-outs a year across the Three Peaks area and beyond - underground cave rescues, mountain and moorland searches, and no small number of stranded livestock - called out by the police as part of the emergency services chain, and funded entirely by donations.
CRO 2, registration PJ65 XCY, is a 2015/16 Land Rover Defender crew cab carrying a demountable-style box rescue body with top-hinged locker doors, a full roof rack with lighting bar and ladder stowage, a snorkel, front winch and LED grille lights. It wears the team's white livery with blue-and-hi-vis-yellow striping, 'CAVE & MOUNTAIN RESCUE' titles on the body and 'CAVE RESCUE' on the light bar, with the Mountain Rescue England and Wales badge on the flanks; a 'Lakeland Conversions' plate sits above the grille. The catalogue records it as a 130-inch chassis, matching the long crew-cab-plus-box configuration in photographs, though one fleet listing describes CRO 2 as a Defender 110.
It serves alongside sister Defenders CRO 1 (PF05 ZNZ, a 2005 Defender 130) and CRO 3 (PX11 BCZ), the fleet reflecting how the CRO's work has broadened from pure cave rescue to general Dales search and rescue since the Second World War.
