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Saturday. I’ve been up Corn Du with Mike and Searchdog Coire in conditions that were pretty unpleasant, it’s been snowing all day, more heavily inland than where I live on the coast. I settle down to watch the Calcutta Cup match as an interested neutral and 20 minutes from time the pager goes off.

Winter has returned to South Wales and the Met Office Mountain Area Forecast for the Brecon Beacons is highlighting a risk not just of hypothermia but of frostbite as well. So despite being hardened to lying outside for long periods of time in any weather as a Dogsbody, I’m actually quite relieved it’s Geraint and not me chosen to be the casualty for the Thursday night mini exercise.

“Just to let you know, there’s going to be a helicopter landing on your garden in a few minutes.”
“Nae problem,” replied the utterly unfazed hotel receptionist.

It’s midnight; I’m relaxed and ready for bed and I’ve just heard the kettle boil for my hot water bottle when the pager goes off. A couple of hours later I’m on a steep hillside in the Rhondda navigating for Mike and his SARDA dog Coire.

I’m shooting down the river on my back, pour down a chute between a rock and a hard place, and get a face full of white water. “Swimmer – rope!” comes the shout from the riverbank. I instinctively put my arms up to catch or snag the rope that should be zipping across my path. “b******s!” the voice shouts as the rope falls behind me. “Swimmer – rope!” yells another would-be rescuer further down the bank. I put my arms up to catch or snag the rope that should be zipping across my path. “Sorry, Kate,” the voice says contritely as it falls short. I drown. Virtually.

I’m assured that yes, the small grey rucksack containing the ‘Little Dragon’ device used to provide warmed oxygen to hypothermia victims really does have curled up in it, snoozing, a small dragon like Idris from Ivor the Engine. “Draco dormiens nunquam tittilandus” (let sleeping dragons lie) is the motto of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so it’s with some trepidation that I open the bag and pull the dragon out into the cold garage.

They’re not ‘newbies’, they’re the Foundation Group. My intake is no longer the Foundation Group, we’re probationary operational members.

Pen y Fan is the highest point in southern Britain. It is a mere 93 feet short of making life impossible for those masochists attempting to complete the Welsh 3000ers in one day. It is also a relatively easy hill to climb, a 3km walk from Pont ar Daf with an ascent of 450 metres along a very well defined path known as ‘the motorway’. Within easy reach of the occupation centres of South Wales and accessed from a trunk road, it’s a very popular mountain.

It’s 7am when the pager pierces my deep sleep and I roll out of bed wondering what day it is. It’s dark, it’s cold because it’s well before the heating’s due to come on, and I realise it’s Sunday. A Sunday when I had nothing planned, which would have meant a long lie-in catching up on sleep. Instead, 20 minutes later I’m headed off to Cardiff to meet up with another team member to drive to west Wales. At least I can doze in the car.

When the training session is in lecture form, there’s a rush for the seats at the back of the room. Just like my students, there’s a certain cachet in sitting at the back, able to watch everything that’s going on, not to appear too eager, and to engage slightly more surreptitiously in small-scale warfare chucking at each other the wrappers from the tin of chocolates Gavin brought to celebrate his birthday.