A mountain rescue team are hosting two pop-up shops in the run up to Christmas so visitors to Brecon can buy official merchandise to help support the service.

Brecon Mountain Rescue Team jumped at the idea to host the pop-up shop for two Saturdays, especially as they are only two weeks into running their online store.

Accompanied by music from Brecon Town Concert Band playing outside, the shop opened in Bethel Square last Saturday, December 11, and it will be opening against this Saturday, December 18.

Brecon MRT volunteer Dominic Turpin, of Ystradgynlais, was one of the team members who helped at the shop over the weekend.

The hillwalker, who has been on the team for around 13 years, said: “We were offered it [the shop] for free which is really nice.

“It’s just for the Christmas period so it’s just for today and then it’s next Saturday, so obviously we jumped at the chance and it just gives us an opportunity to sell loads of our merchandise, which we’ve been selling online.

“We’ve now got an online shop as well, and it we’ve all been donating our second hand kit so it’s got second hand clothing in there as well.”

Dominic said that all of the money raised from the shop - which sells branded Brecon MRT merchandise and second-hand clothing - is going towards the team which has struggled to raise money during the pandemic due to the cancellation of events.

“Every single penny is going to the team”, said Dominic.

“We have to raise about £55,000 a year just to exist so we seek every opportunity we can. We’ve lost all the income we would normally have from events and stuff, so like the events in the hills, and it’s just looking for other ways to raise money so hopefully our local community will be supportive.”

When asked about how the store’s opening day had gone, Dominic said it had been good and that people had been donating and stopping to chat.

Much like when the team receives a call out, the shop has been entirely manned by its incredible volunteers.

Dominic said: “It’s been really nice - lots of people just putting the money in the bucket, but we’ve had lots of people going in the shop as well.

“The online shop has only been running for about two weeks, but it’s taken us a long time to set it up but we’ve got one of the team who runs a second hand book business who knows all the stuff and has been hugely helpful to helping us to understand the process, every post we put on social media we just put a link to our shop. It’s something new for us and it’s going well, it’s just got to replace some of the lost revenue from events.”

Fellow team volunteer, Rob Williams of Brecon, said that their team comes from as far as Cardiff and Swansea - not just the immediate Brecon area.

He also commented on the challenges of raising the money for team during the pandemic.

He said: Hopefully, if Covid allows, we will start events - we have some booked in for next year but obviously we don’t know what’s going to happen next week really.

“A lot of people are really generous, we get left money from community councils, womens institutes, anybody - all the local community just give us money.

"We have money in lieu of flowers at funerals, we’ve been left money in a couple of wills recently, so anything really - we raise that money every year, we always raise it, but we cannot rest on our laurels.

“It’s also thinking of new ideas on how to raise it as well.”