Today the team was very pleased to have been associated with the first ever Bolton Hill Marathon event.

Organised by Phil Eccleston from Bolton, this event took in a course from Moss Bank Park in Bolton, north across the moors to White Coppice, and a return along the Rivington reservoir chain back to Moss Bank Park.

This new event aims to raise money for local charities, with the beneficiaries of this years event being The Brathay Trust, Bolton Mountain Rescue Team and Friends of Moss Bank Park.

A light overnight snowfall on the local moors greeted the runners who assembled in Moss Bank Park for the mass 09.30hrs start, in bitterly cold temperatures that barely crept above 0c throughout the day. (Thankfully generally clear skies graced the event)

153x runners braved the challenging 26.2 miles course, mainly on moorland tracks and surfaced footpaths.

Besides the beneficiaries of the event mentioned above, a great many of the runners taking part were also doing so for their personal charities.

In addition Stansfield Sports Injury Clinic was kindly on hand to assist all runners at the start and finish, with all monies raised by their treatments on offer being kindly donated to the National Autistic Society.

The team was on hand to provide first aid and rescue cover, with demands for such thankfully minimal.

In total we had sixteen Call Out list members present on the day alongside two of our Probationary members, in four of our Team Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulance vehicles, our Team Minibus and two of our members private vehicles.
Team members first met at our Ladybridge Hall Base / HQ for a 09.00hrs departure, with all involved finishing back at our Base / HQ by 17.00hrs.

Thanks are due to our colleagues at Bowland Pennine MRT who kindly allowed us to use the Winter Hill repeater radio channel to ‘run’ our communications on for this event.

The team was very happy to be associated with this new local event, which we believe is to be run next year on a similar date.

During the concluding parts of this event, our BM5 Minibus vehicle came across a male pedal cyclist (Not related to this event) in the vicinity of Jepsons Gate, who had just fallen from his bike, hitting the road face first! and who had suffered a badly bleeding mouth injury.

The two members in BM5 rendered first aid, and transported the man and his pedal bike to a point where his wife met him to take him to hospital for further treatment.

Please note this is recorded here for information and interest and does not feature in our ‘Incident Listings.’