A helpless Herdwick lamb, which appears to have floated ten miles from home before hauling itself onto the rocks, has been rescued by the RSPCA and the RNLI in the nick of time.

An alert fisherman trying his luck on the South side of Workington Harbour in Cumbria couldn’t believe his eyes when he spotted a lamb swimming across the mouth of the harbour and climbing onto some rocks.

With the tide rising, the fisherman was deeply concerned that the lamb wouldn’t last the hour. So he called the RSPCA and reported that the panicked animal was stranded and couldn’t get any further out of the water.

When RSPCA Inspector Martyn Fletcher arrived on the scene, he could see that the woolly young animal was on a breakwater constructed of massive rocks, which would become submerged at high tide.

Insp Fletcher said: “The little lamb was in a perilous position as the tide was coming in. I could see I wouldn’t be able to reach him from the land side because the enormous rocks - covered in slippery seaweed - were too big to safely negotiate.

“The only solution was to rescue the lamb from the sea. It was clear that this was a job for the RNLI, the charity that saves lives at sea. With a lifeboat station conveniently based in Workington Harbour, I approached them for help.

"They responded amazingly quickly with the launch of an inshore lifeboat manned by a volunteer RNLI crew.”

Approaching the huge rocks from the sea, it didn’t take the heroic RNLI crew long to locate the lamb, which had hidden itself amongst the boulders.

After safely securing the sodden animal, they took it on board their lifeboat and brought it back to the RNLI station.

The Herdwick lamb was less than a year old and luckily, it seemed to be uninjured.

Inspector Fletcher continued: “Once I had confirmed that the lamb was none the worse for its traumatic experience, I set about trying to reunite it with its owner, imagining that it would have come from a local Workington farm.

“But here’s the mystery, the lamb’s single ear tag linked it to a farmer in Buttermere, which is 15 miles away.

"When I transported the lamb to this farm, as soon as my van door opened, he started bleeting, confirming that he knew his mother was nearby.

"The farmer just couldn’t work out how his lamb had ended up in the harbour at Workington.

“We can only imagine that the lamb fell into the beck which runs through the valley and eventually meets with the River Derwent which spills into Workington Harbour.

"That’s a 10 mile run. A lamb surviving that is very surprising because although livestock are regularly washed down the river they sadly end up drowning. It is not an uncommon sight to see cattle and sheep carcasses floating off-shore.

“At the end of the day, it is impossible to say for sure how this lucky lamb came to be in the harbour so far from home, but its survival is a miracle. If it wasn’t for the RNLI, the outcome would have been very different and I would like to thank them for their generous and prompt response.”

Gary Lawson from Workington RNLI Lifeboat Station, said: "The RNLI primarily exists to save people but we also respond to requests to rescue animals, mainly because there have been cases of members of the public getting into danger themselves and even drowning after entering the water to help an animal that had got itself into trouble.

"We were more than happy to help out the RSPCA and were all very pleased to hear the lamb is now back home.’

If you see an animal you have concerns about please call the RSPCA's emergency line on 0300 1234 999

To help the RSPCA continue rescuing, rehabilitating and rehoming animals in desperate need of care please visit: www.rspca.org.uk/give or text LOVE to 87023 to give £3 (Text costs £3 + one standard network rate message).