Mountain Rescue Awareness 2013

Last weekend saw the best weather of 2013 and encouraged lots of people to get out and enjoy the outdoors. It was, perhaps, meant to be then that the 4th, 5th and 6th of May was also Mountain and Cave Rescue Awareness Weekend and saw members from our local team, NEWSAR, giving hill safety advice to customers at Go Outdoor.

Service Manager, Christine Oldfield, said “It was great having NEWSAR in store offering essential tips and advice to Go Outdoors’ North West and North Wales customers.”

Christine Oldfield – Service Manager at GO Outdoors

Mountain and Cave Rescue Awareness always falls on the first May bank holiday and outdoor retail giant, Go Outdoors, made it extra special this year by inviting every volunteer mountain rescue team into their local store.

Team members from North East Wales search and Rescue, NEWSAR, were on hand at the Go Outdoors store in Saltney, Flintshire, to field any questions about hill safety and navigation, but it wasn’t just their search and rescue knowledge that customers were interested in.

Rich Brady, from NEWSAR, said “Our presence was part of a national partnership between Go Outdoors and Mountain Rescue England and Wales.

Although the focus was to improve people’s hill safety, customers were making the most of our team members experience outside of NEWSAR too.

We were quizzed by a family on what things to look out for when buying their first tent and a young lady who is walking over 20 miles in a few weeks and wanted advice on a new jacket.”

Volunteer team members were stood at the base of Go Outdoors’ climbing wall on both Saturday and Sunday. The wall is free to use, but the outdoor retailer do ask for a donation that goes straight to Mountain Rescue England Wales, NEWSAR’s national body.

Phil Williams from GO Outdoors and Dani Burgess, NEWSAR, scaling the indoor clmibing wall at Go Outdoors’ Chester store.

Christine continued, “The climbing wall generates around £400 a month from customer donations. Having our local team in store and hearing about what they do for the community went down really well with shoppers.”

NEWSAR was coming off the back of a 12 hour search on Friday night and, while the rest of North Wales were dusting off their BBQs and enjoying the weather, volunteer team members sacrificed their Bank Holiday weekend to help improve awareness locally.

Yesterday, NEWSAR were also supporting the Trinity Famau Scouts annual May Day Duck Race at Loggerheads Country Park. The lovely weather saw lots of people at the event and the team members were on hand to talk to people about the work they do and demonstrate the different types of equipment used on call outs and during training sessions.