At 20.15hrs this evening, we were paged by Greater Manchester Police, requesting the teams assistance with a developing search for a missing 79 years old Bolton man.

The man had gone missing earlier in the day from a Nursing Home in the Bolton area, and with no sign of him as nightfall was approaching, concern was increasing for his well being.

GMP requested that the team concentrate its search efforts in the Queens Park and Heaton Cemetery areas of Bolton, with the team and GMP setting up a joint search control at the Chorley New Road entrance to Queens Park, Bolton, following a full team call out page at 20.27hrs.

Our Team Leader Garry Rhodes MBE and Deputy Team Leader Geoff Seddon, arrived at the Search RVP at 20.55hrs and immediately formulated a search plan, based upon other searches carried out over previous years in this same locality.
Thirty team members responded to this incident, with help also coming from Search Dog handlers Iain and Alision Nicholson.

With GMP Officers concentrating their search efforts around the vicinity of the Nursing Home, and on road searches, team members and the two Search Dog teams were deployed to the Doffcocker Reservoir area, Queens Park and Heaton Cemetery.
By 23.47hrs all areas tasked to the mountain rescue search aspect of this incident were completed, and we were stood down after debriefing at 00.30hrs in the early morning of Monday May 10th.

Greater Manchester Police & Bolton Mountain Rescue Team at the rendevous point.The following resources were involved in this search;

• Bolton MRT, 30x Call Out list members,
  • our four Land Rover Mountain Rescue Ambulances,
  • our BM5 Minibus,
  • Control Trailer (with GPS tracking of individual team members)
  • and our boat (in case searches of the water bodies in Queens Park were deemed necessary by us)
• Mountain Rescue Trail Dog team, handler Iain Nicholson and Trail Dog Mij. (Bowland Pennine MRT / SARDA Wales)
• Mountain Rescue Air Scenting Dog team, handler Alison Nicholson and Search Dog Floss. (Bowland Pennine MRT / SARDA England)
• Greater Manchester Police, Divisional and Specialist Search Officers, including one Missing Person Search Manager.

We subsequently found out from GMP that the missing person was located on Crompton Way in the Astley Bridge area of Bolton, in the early hours of Monday 10th May, and following a routine check by a Doctor he was soon back home safely at the Nursing Home.