At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s not much use being a search technician if you get lost.  Not only does it mean you have one less search technician trying to find the missing person but in a worse case scenario, we have to divert some of the search effort to find them rather than having that resource looking for the missing person.  So you really really really need to know how to use a map and compass.

We obviously use technology such as computer mapping and GPS to help us but (much like mountain rescue), we have to know the fundamentals as technology can sometimes let you down (for example in a heavily wooded area, GPS is useless). Unlike the medical training (no prior experience), I was quite looking forward to this one as I’ve been mountaineering all my life and whilst I am as capable of getting lost as the next person, on the whole, I know how to use a map.

Session one was the theory on maps, compasses, contours, bearings, magnetic variation, distance, time etc etc. Lots of fun trying to remember the really obscure OS map symbols (glasshouse anyone?)

Session 2 was eight hours in the field demonstrating our navigation skills to get to points identified on a map. Much more sneaky was not letting the rest of the group use their map so when the navigator got us to the right point, everyone else had to work out exactly where we are simply by reading the land. One of those things that just gets better the more you practice.

And then we were made to do it again with a much larger scale map that showed much less detail – lots of opportunity to get lost. The whole thing was complicated by the fact that the fields that had previously been ploughed earth was now full of six foot plus sweetcorn. Required a lot of detours and standing round wondering where everyone else had gone.

Joking aside, it is a fundamental skill that we all need to develop as, once the search is planned, we need to search our designated areas exactly, completely and thoroughly – if we miss even a few metres of ground, we might have missed the person we are looking for.