Long serving team member Diane Blakeley plays rounders as part of the Bolton Sports Federation Rounders League. Between 1983 and 2010 the league has raised £96,134.72 for charity which is a fantastic sum of money. In November 2010, Diane decided to nominate Bolton MRT to be their charity for 2011. Bolton MRT was one of seven charities nominated, all of whom were invited to present their case at the AGM to say why they should be selected. Diane made a successful presentation and the team was duly selected as the charity for the year.

On Tuesday 8th November 2011, Diane went along with team members Martin Banks and Paul Copley to discover how much had been raised. Tony Dawson had the unenviable but important task of staying with our Land Rover.

Every rounders team from the league was represented at the AGM as Chairman Glenda Parkinson announced the total monies raised for Bolton MRT over the year. Much to the delight and shock of Diane, Paul and Martin they found out a total of £4,700.00 had been raised. An added bonus was this massive amount meant that the total raised by the league since 1983 passed the £100,000.00 mark, a grand total of £100,834.72. It is an outstanding achievement in that year after year the members of the rounders league have raised tremendous funds to support the work of local charities. The Bolton Mountain Rescue Team at the time congratulated the league on their outstanding support for local charities.

Various fundraising events took place throughout their year in support of Bolton MRT, including the Good Friday Sponsored Walk, Champion of Champions Tournament, Quiz night, Halloween Night, Pyschic Evening, Christmas Party and the end of season Presentation Evening. The team supported some of these events including winning the quiz. At the time we gave a massive thank you to the League Officials, all those members and their families who supported events and a special thank you to all those people helped organise, plan and run events to raise funds for us including Mel Adamson, Denise Simm, Jackie Wright and Angie Hill. With thanks for this outstanding donation Diane presented a plaque on behalf of the team to the League in recognition of their support and fundraising during her 8th November 2011 visit.

In agreement with the Bolton Sports Federation Ladies’ Rounders League, it was decided that their wonderful donation would be used to fund new team hand held lighting units, replacing our now elderly ‘Dragon Lights’ with the remainder of their kind donation being utilised against the purchase of our new Control Vehicle.

Regards the lighting units, our Team Equipment Officer (Communications and Lighting) Steve Fletcher then set about investigating what was available to meet our needs, with the choice being narrowed down to units made by PELI and Streamlight Lighting.

PELI and Safequip Limited (UK importers of Streamlight Lighting) both very kindly loaned to the team various lighting units from their extensive ranges, for Steve and his team colleagues to evaluate, the result of which was that we chose to purchase fifteen Streamlight units from Safequip Limited.

The particular model we decided upon was the Streamlight Fire Vulcan C4 LED hand held search lighting unit, a very lightweight yet very powerful ultra bright light, with two tail lights, in a high impact orange ABS housing, fully weatherproof, and which floats beam up.

These lights are fully programmable, with various lighting mode selections, and are supplied complete with integral battery, charging cradle, 240v mains charging lead, 12v vehicle charging lead, and a robust carry strap.

With thanks to John Wilcock of Safequip Limited, we recently placed an order for fifiteen of these units, and on 2nd October 2012 we received the first delivery batch of ten units.

Today we received the last part of the order with five units being delivered to the team.

These Streamlight Fire Vulcan C4 LED lights have cost £170.00 each, excluding VAT, so the total purchase has been £2,550.00 against the total monies raised by the Bolton Sports Federation Ladies’ Rounders League of £4,700.00. (The remaining sum of £2,150.00 will go against the purchase of our new Control Vehicle)

These new lights will replace in team service five Dragon Lights, which we have operated with for a great many years now.

With these very latest generation Fire Vulcan lights, and given the quantity ordered, we have vastly enhanced our lighting capability for use on operational incidents (Particular when viewed against our still recent purchase of new scene lighting equipment – 8x PELI RALS 9440 Units)

The whole Bolton Mountain Rescue Team membership once again extends its sincere thanks and gratitude to all those in Bolton Sports Federation Ladies’ Rounders League whose kindness in raising money for the team enabled this purchase to go ahead.

Our now surplus to the team (Yet still operational) Dragon Lights will now be donated to our friends and colleagues at Norfolk Lowland Search and Rescue Team, who have limited lighting capability of this nature.

Please also see website news items dated 2nd October 2012, 8th November,7th October, 13th May, 22nd April, 7th February 2011 and 9th November 2010.