This afternoon, our Team President Bob Hutchinson, was honoured to be the guest speaker at the Annual General Meeting of Davyhulme U3A (University of the Third Age) Retirement Group.

Bob attended the meeting at Cornerstone Methodist Church, Hayswater Road, Davyhulme, Manchester, to give a short overview of the work of the Bolton Mountain Rescue Team.

At the conclusion of Bob’s talk, a donation was kindly promised by the U3A members present, alongside the wonderful news that Davyhulme U3A are to make us their Charity of 2016.

Bob’s personal account of today’s visit follows:

“On arrival at Cornerstone Methodist Church, Urmston (Davyhulme U3A meeting place), I was greeted by Mrs Bernice Morris, the Programme Secretary, who had arranged my visit. After a short introduction to Chairlady Brenda Ware I sat down whilst the group had a few short notices followed by their AGM and election of officers. It so happened that all current Officers had indicated that they would stand for re-election and that there were no other nominations. Chairlady Ware decided that one vote would suffice to re-elect the Officers en-bloc…..Bolton MRT note!! One of the last items was the announcementthat Mrs Morris was standing down as Programme Secretary after a number of years, she had already booked the programme for 2016 so her successor had a will haave flying start. Mrs Morris was presented with a lovely bouquet and received a well deserved round of applaus. The whole meeting took no longer than 25 minutes.

It was then my turn and I first showed our BMRT dvd which gives a good indication of the current status of the Team and its work. I followed this by talking about the geginnings of climbing and walking in the UK and the history of MR from the foundation of the Joint Stretcher Committee to the start of the Lancashire teams and of Bolton in particular. The talk was followed by a short question and answer session and then a vote of thanks was given by Ms Barbara Llynes who is the groups PR Officer. Then it was tea and biscuits during which a number of people came up and asked additional questions or told me of their personal connection with MR, One lady having had her son rescued by RPMRT and another having a friend in her waling group rescued by us. I should say that the group have promised to post a donation to us for the talk in the near future. It should be noted also that the group have selected Bolton MRT to be their charity for the coming year for which we are deeply grateful. I have also invited the members to arrange a visit to our base and it seemed that the invitation was well received and quite a number appeared to be very interested.

We shall look forward to having them visit.”