On 7th March this year, Life Vice President Tony McNally and Training Officer Elaine Gilliland, visited the Kingsbridge Centre of Excellence, Rose Bridge High School, Wigan to give an overview of the work and services of Bolton Mountain Rescue Team to six Year 10 pupils with a promise that they could come and visit us at our Ladybridge Hall HQ / Base when we had taken delivery of our new vehicles.

Today, the six Year 10 pupils travelled with their Head Teacher and Teacher to Ladybridge Hall to have a tour of our Base / HQ, and to view all of our equipment and the two new Land Rover 110 Defender MR vehicles based at our Base / HQ, BM1 and BM3.

The highlight of the morning was retired SARDA Search Dog Chi and dog in training Sasha, brought to our base by retired SARDA Dog Handler and long-serving team member, Dave Marsh. Dave gave the pupils a full overview of the use of Search Dogs in Mountain Rescue and everybody was delighted with both Chi and Sasha.

Tony and Elaine then gave all present a tour of the base and an overview of the medical equipment used by the team in their search and rescue tasks, and then the pupils were shown the new vehicles, at which point one asked

‘Can we have a go……..please……with cherries on top’.

With a request like that, Tony and Elaine couldn’t refuse, so both vehicles, each with three pupils and a teacher in, did a quick trip around the Horwich area.

The pupils were obviously absolutely delighted.

Since the team’s visit to Kingsbridge Centre of Excellence, the pupils have been working hard on behalf of the team making and selling cakes. This morning, the Year 10 pupils provided us with a ‘Thank you’ card for our time in showing them our equipment and a fantastic and much appreciated donation of £60:00.

We cannot express enough to the pupils how proud we are of them for taking the time to raise money for the team, and the whole team membership would like to offer sincere thanks for their very generous donation. We look forward to seeing them in the future.