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Friday night arrives, and while most people are out celebrating the end of the working week, Lee Townsend is only just beginning his shift .

At his home in Lytham St Annes, Lancs, he’s preparing for his first job of the evening.

He’s a Blood Biker, a member of the silent emergency service which saves lives and money by transporting urgent supplies between hospitals and labs out of hours.

These can include blood, platelets, medical supplies, spinal fluid, vaccines, donor breast milk for sick babies, patient notes and x-rays.

But the 55-year-old father of two isn’t paid for his potentially life-saving work. Like the other 150 riders from North West Blood Bikes Lancs and Lakes, he does it on a voluntary basis in his free time, as well as running his own advertising business, to help the NHS save money that would otherwise be spent on taxis.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

Explaining what prompted him to join the charity four years ago, he says: “My mum was a midwife for 55 years and I’m a big supporter of the NHS. It’s so valuable and whatever I can do to support it, I will.”

The Lancashire group is part of National Association of Blood Bikes (NABB), which has more than 25 groups.

Call handlers work from home and riders use their own machines. But the team also have a fleet of liveried bikes that can respond to emergencies.

Calls are categorised as regular, urgent, very urgent and emergency. In an emergency the riders use blue lights and sirens. T

hey’re also permitted to go through red lights, but always within the speed limit.

As I join Lee, our first trip of the night is a regular run to the walk-in centre at Whitegate Health Centre in Blackpool to collect blood samples for testing.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

“We do this run 365 days a year,” Lee explains.

It’s about 8pm and the roads are busy but Lee, a former police officer, carefully weaves in and out of the traffic towards the pathology lab at Blackpool Victoria Hospital.

As we pull up he says: “This is why the Blood Bikes are so vital. Taxis can get stuck in traffic, which can mean the difference between life and death if it’s an emergency.”

Back at Lee’s house, I text the shift controller, Sue Wolstenholme, 62, a retired radiographer from Lytham St Annes, to tell her we’re home safe.

It’s 9pm and the theme song of ­Casualty plays out from the living room, where his wife Helen is watching TV.

It dawns on me that we could be attending our own emergency tonight – something Lee has done many times.

He says: “When you get an emergency call, many things go through your mind. You know that someone’s life is at risk and you have a duty of care.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

“If I get too silly on the throttle, you run the risk of losing two lives. You’ve got to take a deep breath and focus.

“When I’ve delivered the package safely, I always take 10 minutes to come back down to earth because of the adrenalin before I head home.”

No sooner have we sat down, Sue rings to say a set of patient’s notes urgently need picking up from the Royal Preston Hospital.

Ambulances are lined up outside the hospital’s A&E and we squeeze through to find a parking spot.

Inside, the waiting room is full and staff are rushed off their feet tending to patients.

Lee recalls the moment in November 2014 when the pathology lab at the Royal Preston Hospital had to be evacuated because of a chemical leak.

He says: “I was just about to sit down for dinner with my family when I got the call. I said to my wife, ‘I’ll see you in a couple of hours’ but I ended up being gone the whole night.”

(Image: Daily Mirror)

Lee and three other volunteers worked alongside the emergency services to transport blood samples to another hospital so they could continue to be tested there.

We head towards Longridge ­Community Hospital, a seven-mile ride, along winding country roads to drop off the vital notes.

A few hours later, we make our third and final journey of the night – a blood sample urgently needs picking up from The Harbour, a new mental health hospital in Blackpool, and taking to the pathology lab.

By the time we’ve completed the job it’s gone midnight, but our shift doesn’t finish until 7am.

Standing in the dimly lit car park, Lee senses I’m flagging and tells me we’ve probably saved the NHS about £120 on taxis tonight.

It may not sound much but since the Lancashire group was launched by chairman Paul Brooks in May 2012, it has saved hospitals in the area more than £1million.

The next day I join Paul, 67, another retired police officer, and his wife Denise, also 67, at their home in Chorley, Lancs, to help man the calls.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

He says: “We’re the biggest and busiest group in the country. We’ve handled 26,000 calls so far.”

The Lancashire group has 350 volunteers in total, with a wide range of backgrounds including plumbers, builders, postmen and even a surgeon.

At 20, student Niall Miller, from Leyland, is their youngest rider. His reason for joining almost a year ago is a personal one.

He explains: “A friend of a friend died in 2014 after falling from his bike. He was a ­motocross rider.

"They did everything they could for him but unfortunately he passed away.

“I’ve also seen the way budgets for the NHS are getting cut and the Government seem to be giving up on it. I’m no doctor or nurse but I can ride a ­motorcycle and if that helps, that’s what I’ll do.”

Niall juggles college, where he is ­studying photography, with volunteering twice a month.

He says: “Sometimes it means I have to tell my friends I can’t go out with them. But they’re ­understanding and know why I do it.”

The information the Blood Bikers get is very basic and they only occasionally hear about the outcome of their often life-saving work.

Paul says: “There was someone that was bleeding out in the operating theatre and we got them blood in time and saved their life.”

Retired civil servant Denise, who helps run the charity with her husband, says: “When you get a call to transport a spinal fluid sample for a child or baby, you know it’s life threatening and critical. It could be meningitis .”

Until recently, Denise handled the calls for the 24-hour donor breast milk bank, which is now run by another Blood Bike ­volunteer.

Milk is provided by the Northwest Human Milk Bank and is stored in a freezer, paid for by the charity, at Preston Hospital’s neo-natal unit.

As the charity doesn’t have a base, calls went straight to her mobile.

She says: “Last Christmas Eve there was a critically ill baby who needed donor breast milk and they got it there in time and the baby recovered.”

But they can’t help everyone and two years ago, a rider taking a sample from Preston to Manchester got a call to say it wasn’t needed as the patient had died.

Denise says: “It absolutely floored him. He thought it was his fault because he couldn’t get there quickly enough.”

The Blood Bikers aren’t just restricted to their local area either. Paul recently had to organise a relay of riders from other NABB groups to take an urgent sample from Preston to South Wales.

Paul, who is a magistrate, recalls: “They couldn’t determine what was wrong with a critically ill patient so they sent it to a specialist lab in Cardiff.

“I did the first leg and used the motorbike’s blues and twos to get through the traffic, whereas a taxi would have got stuck.

“The sample revealed what the patient was suffering from and they changed his medication – if they hadn’t, he would have died. We got a special thanks from the hospital for that.”

For such selfless endeavours, these mostly unsung heroes have now achieved recognition after being named the UK’s Best Health project in this year’s National Lottery Awards – the annual search to find the UK’s favourite Lottery-funded projects.

Nearly 5,000 people voted for the charity, which plans to spend its £3,000 prize on a new liveried bike.

Lee says: “We take heart in the fact that we quietly run around in the shadows and do what needs to be done.

“None of us do it for the glory but it’s nice when someone switches the light on.”