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Diary

Wednesday 10th August

Tonight is the Cracken Edge fell race, a major fundraiser for the team. I rush home from work to get to the hut for 18.30, knowing that I'm stationed about half way round the race. I'm with Dave (to differentiate between all the Daves I'll call him 'whistling Dave'!). We have a debate about whether there's enough time to walk to our position and, after a lot of dithering, decide to cadge a lift in the landrover and walk back.

We arrive early and spend half an hour talking about our respective holidays (Corsica GR20 an Alpine hut tour). We're interrupted by the first runner, who has opened up a significant lead on the second placed runner. There are over 200 runners altogether, but we mange to spot team members Mike (Cas Care Mike, not Darts and Doms Mike!), Jane, Darren, Neil and backmarker, Steve, following the last woman extremely closely!

After they've all passed we try and find out what to do next. As you can see from Mick's unusual radio technique below, we had a few communications problems on the night, even though we were using mobile 2 as a link.

Sadly, we did manage to hear the instruction to walk along the route past Big Stone and down to the back road above Chinley collecting the marker flags on the way. There was some confusion(!) about who was doing what, so our pleasant walk was interrupted by me intercepting a message from Paul in Mobile 1 wondering if he needed to wait any longer on the road before driving back to base. I jumped on the radio to stop Paul leaving us stranded and we arrived at the landrover 15 minutes later, just as it went dark.

Altogether, a successful evening, with £1200 raised for the team.

Friday 26th August

A low key team meeting tonight, as befits what feels like the last Friday of the summer. The main item of note is the treasurer's report, with an income this month of well over £2000. The major contribution comes from the Cracken Edge fell race (£1200), but there are also contributions from, for example, collecting boxes in pubs and shops, talks given by various team members, and general donations. We get a £15 donation and a rather nice letter from a lady who wanted to give to the team rather than buy flowers for a friend's funeral.

Sadly, we spent over £4000 this month, so we made a net loss. The main item was a set of new search lamps to replace the old miners lamps, that we must have had since the year dot. The good news from our point of view is that the lamps are about half the weight of the old ones.

There was also an exhibtion of the Gateway to Kinder project (the new HQ) in Hayfield, which members staffed. There was generally a positive response from visitors about the plans.

A short report from the team leader (apparently nothing relevant happened in Yosemite) and off to the pub for a drink.

A little extra

Geoff, Chrissie and Darren went on a training session with the Police helicopter, and came back with the couple of pictures below: