Our quarry is in this valley somewhere. We start searching – it’s already dark and the snow is falling hard. The snowcover makes it worse as it covers the grass between the tussocks and the tops of the tussocks themselves evenly, meaning that with every step you’ve no idea if you’re going to be standing on a tussock or sinking knee deep in snow. For a moment, the snow slows and I get a view of a line of headtorches and search lamps stretching from ridge to ridge, sweeping down through the valley, a line of searchers led by dogs and handlers searching for the two of them.

Two and a half hours in and I’m tired, wet and steaming lightly in the cold. My skiing jacket isn’t coping with the hard tromping we’re doing and I’m overheating inside it. There’s a call over the radio, one of the dogs has a strike. Adrenaline pumps around my body and as one the line stops, instructed by control to hold position. It’s confirmed, the man and woman we’ve been looking for, alive, cold but very happy to see us. We sweep forward and crowd around, our lights turning that small patch of mountain to daylight. A find! Alive!

We turn and start walking them off, grinning, glad that we’ve found them alive.

A message over the radio: The man’s wife has reported him missing as well, but not to worry, the police told her that we’d found him safe and well.

He blanches.

Did they tell her who I was with, he asks.

A sudden realisation hits us and we try to hide our smiles at his misfortune. We shrug and walk them off.

It’s only later, back in base tucking into tepid pie and chips the police provided that we hear the reaction of his wife to finding out who he’d been with. I left base with visions of his clothes on the snow-covered lawn when he got home.

Truth really is stranger than fiction.

Sorry about the gap recently, I’ve been mad busy sorting Mal’s wedding and other things. This one obviously did not take place recently.

The pager went off again just before the conference call – search for a missing elderly lady in Maerdy. I jumped onto the conference call which didn’t last very long and cleared a few other things off my desk before taking my leave. Heavy showers, torrential at times, slowed my progress but I managed to get there quite quickly. Taking the Landrover out I had a call telling that this was not an immediate (blue light) response. Locking base up I headed off in the Landrover down towards Aberdare for the valley-hop across to Maerdy. Traffic was medium and the road conditions a little wet so I proceeded along at normal speeds until on the way out of Aberdare my phone rang. Pulling over to answer it, my instructions were clear: “Blue-light it and put your foot down, we’ve got another job.”

Flicking the lights on I did indeed put my foot down, overtaking the surprised cars in front of me I headed over the mountain. In Maerdy the crew was waiting for me and after getting everyone on board we headed off. Information immediately started flowing in as I slapped the sired on. We had a woman with a leg injury on the mountain in Llwynypia. It’s a good drive – 7 miles, google maps reckon 20 minutes. It wasn’t that long on blues. We got there to find that St John’s were on scene and our crew went in while I got changed and waited for the two guys from Brecon team to join us. The casualty was on an archery range and before we headed up in the light rain, I turned to the large group of people beside us. Several of them wore green tops with logos of a kangaroo – not surprising since we already knew the casualty was Australian. I turned to a man in a hi-viz jacket and asked them to stop the shooting on the ranges – we’d had a report over the radio that the party ahead of us were seeing arrows flying. After a brief conversation the official with a radio saw things my way and started calling on all ranges to stop firing. Wondering where all these tourists came from I headed back to our group and off we went. Within 10 minutes we were at the casualty site. After a brief discussion over the relative merits of a helicopter evacuation, we decided to “scoop and go” and a few minutes later we were starting the journey back to the control vehicle where the county ambulance was waiting for us.

The carryout was interesting, I ran point trying to find a decent route out. Halfway out the rain got heavy. Very heavy. I had a helmet on in case we were going to call a helicopter in (like most of my teammates) and so I didn’t bother fighting to get my hood adjusted to fit over my helmet – it’s a new coat and I’m not used to all the adjustments yet. By the time we got back to control it was raining heavily and with our casualty in pain, we helped the ambulance crew load her on board the truck before stopping for a few minutes to sort our kit out. Of course, now that the casualty was in the ambulance it stopped raining. I still managed to get a soaking though because as it turned out my coat is very waterproof. I had a hood full of water that covered me when I went to shake it out. Great.

We packed the Landrover back up with sodden kit as the staff from the activity center brought us cups of tea and Welshcakes which were greatfully received, as were the thanks that were piled onto us. At last I took a moment to look around and realised that there were a few different nations and that people had some kind of badges dangling from their necks. The picture became clear when one of our crew came over and whispered to us.

“Do you know what we’ve just stopped?”

“Er…no…?”

“The World Archery Championship. We’ve stopped the World Archery Championships. The woman we rescued was a substitute for the Olympic Archery team.”

We headed back to Maerdy where the search was wrapping up soon after that. It wasn’t long before we were back at base setting our kit out to dry, buoyant in the wake of a job well done.

Some of the things in that article are quite rough to have to read. The violence with which he beat her seems unbelievable given that while we were searching it rapidly became apparent that she was a warm and friendly woman who was generally a happy and bouncy person. While that sounds a little stereotypical of what someone says after this kind of event, I’m sincere in this case – when you search for a missing person you have to find out a lot about them, facets of their life that may not be apparent to their nearest and dearest. The police will collect information from a variety of sources to build up a complete picture about a person so that we can more accurately predict where they are.

In this case however what stuck in my mind was just how friendly and warm people said she was. A very sad outcome, but gratifying to see that the police managed to get enough evidence to arrest him.