This evening the operational team membership was up on the flanks of Winter Hill taking part in an exercise devised by our Equipment Officer – Water Dave Cook.

Meeting at Hordern Stoops car park, the exercise commenced at 20.00hrs and involved the firing of the rocket flares carried on all our vehicles by small parties of team members. Four parties were sent out to Winter Hill Cairn, Noon Hill Cairn, Will Narr and Old Rachel’s. Team members should have had excellent visibility of each other’s flare locations, but the low cloud on the night mean the flare visibility was reduced from ten miles down to about ten metres!

The exercise concluded with a report of an exercise casualty located at a central point between all four flare positions. Due to the poor visibility the search parties were given grid reference to work with. The exercise casualty was reported as wearing “a black jacket and orange trousers” – this was true but the team were surprised learn the “person” was only four centimetres high, lying on a rock and made of Lego. With team members bearing down on the target location, a find was made by team member Gary Melia who kindly carried out a strenuous solo carry back of the Lego to Hordern Stoops car park.

In total thirteen team call out list members, four trainee members and one potential new trainee team member were involved in this evenings training exercise, which concluded with post exercise “refreshments” in the warmth of the Belmont Bull Public House in Belmont village