First outdoor Wednesday evening training exercise of the year, and its a wintry one on Holcombe Moor

This evening, in wintry conditions of snow lying on the local moors, team members took part in an area familiarity and navigation exercise on and around Holcombe Moor and Holcombe Hill above Bury.

We border this high moorland area with our colleagues at Rossendale and Pendle MRT, with occasional calls received by both teams to incidents mainly around the area of Holcombe / Peel Tower.

The exercise was arranged by team member Phil Horner, who works at the Military range at MoD Holcombe Moor Camp, ably assisted in planning tonight by team member Michael Wakerley.

In total 17x Call Out list and one trainee team member took part tonight, alongside six of our remaining probationary members.

Rumours that GPS devices, maps and compasses were put aside tonight at one point for a spot of snow man building are entirely with foundation – the snowball fight meanwhile had an indecisive outcome.

A further six team members were present at our Ladybridge Hall base / HQ this evening, checking kit, arranging future SAR-H training, updating IT systems and reporting team incidents to the national MREW database.