A 72-year-old woman has been airlifted to hospital after breaking her leg while walking on the Isle of Mull.
The woman was then taken to the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Glasgow.
She was walking near Calgary Bay on the western part of the island when she fell and fractured her leg.
The alarm was raised at about 4.30pm today.
Coastguard teams from both Tobermory and Craignure also attended.
The paramedics on the ground decided to call a helicopter due to the fact that there was going to be a “long and uncomfortable stretch of carry” for the teams if they were to take her down by themselves.
They made the decision to call the ambulance at 6pm.
Challenging low cloud cover
The helicopter in Prestwick was scrambled to help. As it approached it had to fly low and slow near the coast because of low cloud cover.
A coastguard spokesman said: “The lower the clouds the lower they have to fly.
“It is really difficult, really difficult, to fly through a cloud. And it’s really quite disorientating for the pilot, especially when they’re so close to the cliff.
“It’s just about being really careful.
“Then the teams on the ground said that helicopter arrived, some sort of visibility cleared for them.
‘A gap in the clouds’
“So it was quite good timing, you know, they managed to get a gap in the clouds and come into land.”
The helicopter crew arrived at 7.10pm. The coastguard said the woman was now quite cold as she had been there for a few hours.
They picked her up and traveled to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow which has a helipad.
A coastguard spokesman said: “Because the helicopter was based in the southwest of Scotland, it makes sense to take her there.
“Nobody wants to fly up to Inverness or to Stornoway with a casualty as that leaves a gap.
“There’s no helicopter in the southwest. So they go to Glasgow so they are not far from their base.
The woman’s condition is believed to be stable.
Conversation