Mike France, centre left, receives his 40-year-service award from team leader Keith Wakeley
A mountain rescuer who began his service before the present team leader was born received two awards for his dedication.
Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team member Mike France has chalked up 40 years with the volunteers who go to the aid of walkers and climbers in some of the bleakest Pennine uplands.
Mr France received two certificates, from Mountain Rescue England and Wales and from the Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation, to mark his long service.
The former plumber has held a variety of roles in mountain rescue and is currently chair of MRE&W’s national fundraising committee.
He has also been a search and rescue dog handler, is a former team leader and deputy team leader at Woodhead, has been a Peak District Mountain Rescue Organisation incident controller for 14 years, and was for 12 years its chair and representative on the national mountain rescue body.
When not carrying out his volunteer duties with the rescue team, Mr France is estates manager at the National Children’s Centre in Huddersfield.
Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team member Wayne Thackray said: “When Mike France joined his local mountain rescue team, the M62 and Scammonden reservoir were still under construction; you could still pay for your weekly groceries with a 10-bob note and get change.
“The car and telephone were still luxury items. That was in 1970; 40 years later both the world and mountain rescue have changed beyond recognition.
“While the ethos of rescuing others remains unchanged, the methods and technology, with GPS tracking, satellite phones, the mobile phone, and satellite imagery have changed beyond Mike’s wildest imaginings as a young man in the 70s.
“Mike recounts one particular call out as an example where it took 12 hours to mobilise the team because each member with a car had a ‘pick up list’ and would drive from one house to the next waiting for them to make flask and sandwiches and then move to the next pick up.
“The team can now respond to callouts and achieve 10-minute response times on certain calls.”
Mike France acts as incident controller during a Woodhead MRT training exercise
Mr France spent his youth, teens and his early 20s in Scouting, as a Cub and Scout and later as a leader. He was the mountaineering adviser for the Scout Association in West Yorkshire, checking people’s mountaineering skills and signing their authorisation forms.
In 1970 he joined what was to become Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team. Woodhead MRT was formed in the early 70s by the amalgamation of the Huddersfield Scout MRT, Stocksbridge Barugh Rovers and Sheffield Scout MRT after the death of three Scouts during the 1964 Four Inns challenge.
Two of the team’s founder members are still active engaging in support roles within the Woodhead rescuers, and in 2014 will join the team in celebrating a half century in service.
Mr France received a Chief Constable’s Commendation for his work during the 2007 South Yorkshire floods and has been invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Palace.
He took part in operations in the aftermath of the Lockerbie aircraft bombing, the Kegworth air crash on the M1, and more recently in the rescue of motorists stranded in deep snow last December on the A57 at South Anston near Rotherham.
At the presentation at the team’s Hade Edge headquarters, Keith Wakeley, the current Woodhead team leader quipped: “Mike has been in mountain rescue longer than I have been born.”
Woodhead Mountain Rescue Team has provided cover for the hills and moors around southern Huddersfield and the Woodhead Pass, as well as the north-eastern Peak District and West and South Yorkshire since 1964.
