Where your money actually goes
Every pound donated to this challenge goes to Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team, a volunteer charity that turns out in the dark, in the rain, for free, for anybody who needs it.
Where the money goes
- Who benefits
- Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team (registered charity 508209)
- Area covered
- Around 350 square miles of East Lancashire
- Availability
- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
- Who the team are
- Unpaid volunteers with pagers and day jobs
- Cost to the person rescued
- Nothing
- How money reaches them
- Via the Rotary Club of Rossendale charity account
Mountain rescue is free, but it is not cheap
If you fall on Pendle Hill tonight, nobody will ask for your card details. A team of volunteers will get out of bed, drive to a layby in the dark, and walk onto the moor to find you. That service is free at the point of need and always has been.
It is not free to run. Stretchers, casualty bags, radios, ropes, lighting, medical kit, vehicles, fuel, insurance, training and a base to keep it all in. Mountain rescue teams in England and Wales are charities, funded largely by donations from the communities they serve, and they receive no routine government funding for their day to day running costs.
What RPMRT does
Rossendale and Pendle Mountain Rescue Team covers roughly 350 square miles of East Lancashire. That includes Pendle Hill, the Rossendale valley, the moors above the valley towns and part of Greater Manchester. Callouts include:
- Injured walkers, runners and mountain bikers on the hills.
- Searches for missing and vulnerable people, including those with dementia, which now form a large part of many teams' work.
- Assisting the ambulance service to reach places wheels cannot go.
- Flood and severe weather response in the valley.
It is worth saying plainly: the people doing this are not employed. They train in their own time, buy into it, and go out at three in the morning on a Tuesday because somebody they have never met is cold and frightened on a hillside.
Why a runner is raising it this way
There is a neat logic to raising money for mountain rescue by spending a night on the hills. Tessa will be out there voluntarily, in the dark, in whatever the weather does, with a head torch and a plan. If it goes wrong, the people she is raising money for are the ones who would come.
Most of us will never need mountain rescue. The point of funding them is that the one person who does need them tonight should not have to hope somebody remembered to fundraise.
What your donation does
RPMRT decides how to spend what it receives, and it goes into the general work of keeping a rescue team operational. In broad terms, donations of this kind fund kit, training, vehicle running costs and the base itself.
Any amount is worth giving. A one off five pounds from a lot of people beats waiting for somebody else to give a large sum. The bank details are here, and the reference is Tess RTHW.
Community
A valley turning out for one of its own, and for the team that turns out for all of us.
Endurance
Sixty miles is a long way to ask of a body. Watching someone do it changes what you think is possible.
Making a difference
Every pound funds the kit, training and callouts that bring people down off the hills alive.
