We’d been called at about 1700 to search for a missing person near Swansea. I was at base quickly enough and once I was changed, I got the second vehicle ready to leave and off we went. Blue lighting it out of Dowlais along the A465 to Hirwaun is never fun – it’s a horrible piece of road and with plenty of spray and rain, we held back a bit. Once past Hirwaun, we were on a dual carriageway and then the M4. One last bit of driving through semi-urban areas and we were at the RV.

It was a pretty quick briefing. She’d been missing since the previous night. There was some concern for her safety. There wasn’t much to go on. Here’s your area, do your 300m search. Off you go.

The 300m search area is an interesting statistic. A lot of material has been collated in respect to missing person behaviour and the number of people found within 300m of the point where the missing person was last seen or was last known to be is very high. As a result, we frequently conduct a hasty search of the area immediately surrounding that point.

We’d only been searching for an hour or so – 300m doesn’t sound like much, but a circle of radius 300m is quite large – especially when it’s heavily wooded or scrubland. We’d met up with the second party and were just working out how best to attack the next area when one of the lads who was still walking back to us stopped. It took us a second to realise he was trying to attract our attention, but he’d seen something – and indeed, there she was. In a sleeping back with candles and a magazine, she lay in the forest, cold, wet and by now quite hypothermic.

We wasted no time tending to her and were soon handing her over to the Ambulance service for transport to hospital. The mad rush stopped and we started gathering our equipment – and our thoughts.

I stopped to think. How could she do that? I understand how people can get low enough to feel that there’s nothing left for them – I’ve had some pretty low points in my life and without the presence of good friends I’m not sure I wouldn’t have been in the same boat. But what I couldn’t understand was that she was sat there, under the trees, waiting. Within shouting distance of some houses, she lay there and let the elements take her – and that I couldn’t understand. I can fathom the need to end it all, but to passively lie there and wait…why the torture of waiting?

We’ve searched for a number of “despondent” people over the past few years. Some we’ve found safe and well and helped. Some we’ve been unable to provide anything but comfort for the family with the knowledge that they didn’t suffer. Some we’ve just not found. Each one is unique. You’re never sure if it’s a cry for help or a determined attempt to end it all. I’ve seen all age groups from teenagers to octagenarians, I’ve seen all manner of methods. I’ve accepted each one on it’s characteristics. This search struck a nerve in me, something happened there that I couldn’t understand.

I’m not sure I’ll ever understand how she could wait there, sitting in amongst the trees.

I drove up to Aberystwyth tonight to take Sean back for his lecture tomorrow. I checked the MetOffice reports, but after a bit of a snow shower around 1700 this afternoon, the only thing reported was “icy roads” – not normally a problem anywhere other than my street, so off we went. No problems and driving back was fine…until I hit Storey Arms. Well, I didn’t hit it – I’d slowed down a bit by that point. I knew that this was the worst part of my journey and the fingers of white creeping into my lane from the snow told me that it was a little chilly outside. I’m glad I did slow down, because after a little wobble at Storey Arms when I found the black ice, I slowed down a bit more. I was wrong about one thing though.

All the way down from the Storey Arms to the Beacons Reservoir the road was icy. I was crawling along at around 10mph when I started the descent down towards the Nant Ddu Lodge – and I’m glad I was because halfway down the hill, I saw blue lights. Letting the engine slow me down, I saw a police car pulled into one side with a car opposite him, halfway up a lamppost. The car in question had obviously visited both hedges before trying to climb the lamppost, but failed, leaving itself at approx 30 degrees. To be fair to the driver, at under 10mph, I was finding it challenging to keep the car going where I wanted it.

Carrying on down the road, I checked traction at the first Merthyr Roundabout and found that it had returned – looks like the salt’s done its job, I though. I was wrong.

I had a brief wobble over one of the bridges which I’d slowed down for, and so I kept my speed slow as I headed through the Merthyr area and down the next stretch of the A470 to Abercynon. I didn’t so much wobble as become aware that I had very little traction on the next piece, so I let the car drift down to a sedate 20mph and saw another RTC on the opposite carriageway, with another police car in attendance. Keeping the speed low, myself and another car made it down to Abercynon. Now, with the bad weather recently, the mountain road from Nelson has been closed, so I headed down the A470 towards Caerphilly. Keeping a good few hundred meters behind the car in front, we crossed the ice-covered viaduct at Abercynon and carried on towards Pontypridd – I was expecting the Trallwng corner to be bad – it’s an elevated section, banked and a very sharp corner. I was only doing 20mph so had plenty of time to see the police car with his lights on in the opposite carriageway waiting for the RTC and waving at me – presumably because I wasn’t driving like a loon.

The other car and I carried on down the A470 at a gentle pace of about 35mph, slowing down for the odd bridge - unlike the idiot in the white van that shot past us like we were stood still, wobbled precariously as he found the ice on the bridge up ahead and, having stabilised himself, carried on at a speed that was ridiculously dangerous for everyone on the road.

Whoever said you don’t need crampons in South Wales? Never mind the mountain, I almost whipped them out to get back to the house tonight. The car is at the bottom of the hill – I could see the ice shining like glass on the road as I approached and parked the car neatly out of the way. The walk up was interesting – going up a slope with little or no traction whilst hanging on to the fence must have been amusing to the cat who was sat watching me.

So, home safe. To bed for now, to see what joy tomorrow’s weather brings. I’ll be thinking of the lads and lasses that make up the three main emergency services who are out in the cold tonight as I cuddle up in my warm bed.

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.