Cannock Chase Walk

As you know Bob, Kathy, Amy, Roger, (memory failure) and myself ran a feeding station/checkpoint for the Cannock Chase Walk a couple of weekends ago. (In case anyone else is reading this, the Chase Walk is organised by the Scouts every year and involved teams of walkers completing a 40 mile walk in under 24 hours around Cannock Chase). We have run checkpoint 12, at the 32 mile mark,for a few years now.
It involves going to the scout stores at 09:00 picking up a mess tent, cooking stuff, tables, chairs, generator, lights, water carriers, water etc. 3 cars driving to Cannock and setting everything up by 11:00. Spending the day checking the teams in, providing drinks, cooking about 250 sausages and onions for the hot dogs, providing encouragement and the occasional first aid, packing up in the dark after the last teams have reached the following checkpoint and leaving site at about 22:00 getting back just in time to unpack and head for the pub.
It is completely voluntary, we do it for fun and to provide a bit of humour, support, food and drink for the brave souls who are doing this walk.

What really annoyed us was that for the last hour or so we entertained a couple of the organisers (a man and wife I think) who sat in the tent doing nothing but feeling important then watched us dismantling everything and carrying it back to our cars while managing to stand there without lifting a finger to help. Very full of self-importance. The woman did comment that there is nothing more difficult than taking a tent down in the dark! I don't think they even said thank-you.

We don't do it for the thanks but it wouldn't hurt. Roger was adamant that he wouldn't do it again. No wonder they have trouble finding people to run the checkpoints.

SEARCH and RESCUE

Bob and myself got involved in a search and rescue mission. After darkness fell Kathy popped into the woods for a pee. Amy received a phone call about 10 mins later from Kathy saying the she had got lost. Bob and I headed off with torches in the direction we thought she had gone and made a pincer movement around a hill waving torches while Bob chatted to Kathy on the phone. She couldn't see the torches so we asked her to shout and headed in the direction of her call. She spotted the torches and we completed a successful rescue. She was greeted by cheers from some of the resting walkers when we returned to the checkpoint.