NORTH Dartmoor Search and Rescue Team are pulling out all the stops to celebrate their 50th anniversary in style with a gala dinner dance next month.

The 50th Anniversary Gala Dinner will be held on Saturday, September 14 at Okehampton College.

Suggested dress is ‘black tie and gladrags’ and there will be a three-course dinner and live music from swing band Company B and close harmony trio The Hummingbirds.

‘The team is a huge part of the Okehampton community so rather than having a private party we wanted this to be a celebration with Okehampton,’ said NDSART fundraising officer Robbie Taylor.

‘We have allocated 200 places and we are holding it at Okehampton College because we want to support them. It is set to be a really big knees up.’

It is 50 years last Saturday (August 17) since the Okehampton-based North Dartmoor team was founded, a year after the first rescue team on the moor was established in Tavistock.

‘That was set up after two army cadets from Sandhurst lost their lives from hypothermia on Dartmoor. It was decided that a team was required to provide emergency assistance on the moor,’ said Robbie.

‘It was founded in 1968 in Tavistock and the Okehampton group broke away as a separate group in 1969, hence it is our 50th celebration this year.

‘The part of Dartmoor above Okehampton is a remote part of the moor and is quite different from the southern part of the moor and it was decided to have one group covering the south and one covering the north.’

There are now four search and rescue teams covering Dartmoor, with the addition of two others at Ashburton and Plymouth. They specialise in knowledge of their own part of the wilderness that is Dartmoor.

The North Dartmoor group currently numbers just over 50 members, all volunteers. This includes trainees, currently numbering 12, who spend a year to 18 months training with the team, covering everything from rope skills to first aid, navigation and water skills. While the North Dartmoor team now have their own purpose-built headquarters off Hameldown Road in Okehampton after years of fundraising, they were previously based elsewhere in the town. At one time they parked all their vehicles at Okehampton Police Station but now have allocated space undercover at their Hameldown Road base.

Many in Okehampton will remember founder member, the late Fred Barlow. His son and daughter, Paul and Ruth Barlow, will be guests of honour at the gala dinner.

‘Fred was an influential figure in mountain rescue full-stop,’ said Robbie. ‘He was Okehampton through and through and he was massively involved in many community activities in the town. He formed youth groups in the town as well as being part of the mountain rescue team.

‘Fred worked for what was the GPO [General Post Office, then in charge of national telephone and postal services] and he was one of the only people in Okehampton who had a telephone because of who he worked for. So he would be the one who received the call to go to a rescue and was then responsible for ringing around everyone who had a phone.’

While things have changed over the years in terms of the technology, local knowledge of the moor remains the key strength of the team as they help the police and others search for lost people and injured people on the moor.

Robbie said the current members would like to trace original members of the team so they can invite them to the gala dinner.

‘We would love all the past members to get in touch because without them we wouldn’t be where we are today,’ he said.