The Northumberland National Park Mountain Rescue Team provides a vital life-saving, emergency search and rescue service, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year across the whole of the Northumbria Police area. This vast and largely remote and unpopulated area encompasses all of Northumberland and Tyne & Wear and measures approximately 5,000 sq. kilometres or 3,000 sq. miles.

From humble beginnings Mountain Rescue in the UK is now a world-class, professional service and remains entirely voluntary at the point of delivery, trained to operate in the harshest conditions both on and off the mountains. To give some idea of how busy the teams are there were only four days last year in the whole of the UK without a team being called out!

All team members are volunteers and give their time to train and respond to incidents entirely without charge. A considerable financial commitment is also made by each team member who is responsible for the provision of some of their clothing and equipment and all their own travelling expenses.  

As a Charity they rely on public donations, grants and legacies to continue to deliver this highly professional emergency service so presentations such as this are vitally important to them.

A lot of hard work went into organising this very successful evening and our grateful thanks go to our Mark Social team for all their efforts as well as to Shiremoor Masonic Hall and its team for the use of the building and facilities.

Also, many thanks to all who attended to support the evening and donate the raffle prizes. Without you we couldn’t make such fantastic donations as this to worthwhile charities.

Another wonderful example of the impact in our local communities of both our local and national Mark Benevolent Funds.