The class of 2016

On Saturday 12th November this year Devon charity Dartmoor Search and Rescue Ashburton held its annual trainee selection day. Following the assessment 5 lucky candidates were invited to join the search and rescue team as trainees, attending their first training evening just 4 days later. Becky, one of the new intake was invited to blog about her first few days in the team and she kindly obliged. Thanks Becky!

Read about Becky’s first week below.

Becky’s first week.

The first day. The first week. Five new trainees with lots of ‘no question is a stupid question’ questions. Only a week ago we had no idea if we would be stood among the red jackets at Hemsworthy Gate as we still had Saturday’s assessment day to get through.

Anyway cutting that story short, five of us got that wonderful phone call and here we are on our very first training night.

A few faces we don’t know from our assessment day – and to be honest I didn’t recognise many people I had already met now with their hats on. The pub later solved that mystery.

Back to the task in hand. We were allocated our search teams and given our jobs to do. With the help of Al I was in charge of Dart 23’s radio. My days working in the office of a ferry company paid off slightly with a marginally greater confidence in using the radio. Though it took me a while to work out the wind affects the message – hopefully it didn’t give the controllers too much of a headache.

Fairly quickly the other two teams located the ‘casualties’ who had been reported missing after going out for a walk. They were on the top of the Tor and had various different injuries, one was unconscious.

It was pretty inspiring watching all the casualty carers spring into action and from the perspective of a newbie it all looked rather professional.

We then helped with the stretcher back down from the Tor. It looked a pretty smooth ride from my angle, though Dart 23 were obviously the better stretchers bearers… That’s what Alec said anyway.

We were soon enough having our debrief and the night seemed to be over in a flash. It was back to the pub and my first visit to the Rugglestone Inn at Widecombe. Definitely think I’ll be making a sneaky trip back there.

It was a great first training night and we were certainly made to feel very welcome, roll on next week.