CHRISTINA Bloor is recovering this week after being plucked from a Lakeside beauty spot by mountain rescuers.

The 22-year-old was stretchered off Rossett Gill in the Lake District after falling and injuring her ankle.

But the reluctant victim only alerted the Langdale and Ambleside Mountain Rescue team as a last resort - after boy friend Roger tried to carry her to safety.

Now back at her Timble home, near Otley, the Cambridge University student is red-faced about the escapade - because it came after she and Roger had actually scaled Scafell Pike.

"We'd done the hard part and we were just trotting down the apparently easy bit when I fell," she said.

Suspecting a broken ankle, Christina and Roger struggled on until a passer-by insisted they contact the emergency services.

Christina said: "I hadn't wanted to ring them because I've heard all these things about people 'phoning them from mobiles and wasting their time.

"Roger was going to carry me all of the way but in the end we had to contact them and they took me down on a stretcher."

She was taken to Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal on Monday evening where doctors examined her badly-swollen ankle.

And being temporarily incapacitated threw up further problems of its own, such as getting home to Timble.

"I had been driving and my car wasn't insured for Roger so we had to ring the insurance company from the hospital to get him covered to take us home. It was all a bit of pain, really," said Christina.

Examinations of the injured ankle have not yet established if it is broken or not. Christina said she expected to find out after further tests due to be carried out tomorrow.

Currently studying for PhD in maths at Cambridge, she said the injury was unlikely to affect her progress in the early part of the new term.

However, a course sponsorship from British Aerospace should have seen her travel to Glasgow shortly to carry out work for the hi-tech firm.

"I don't think I'm going to manage that now," she said. "It's all rather embarrassing really."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.