In April I finally finished a big project at work and had some time off to relax – the perfect break would be some walking in the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. Of course the first thing that usually happens when I start to relax is that I get a cold, annoyingly this happened ...

Craig y Llyn (GW/SW-010) was my second SOTA activation of the day and I arrived to find the whole area turned into some kind of building site. It transpires that they’re building a wind farm here and are in the process of clearing trees. Summit Factfile GW/SW-010 – Craig y Llyn – 600m, 4 points Latitude: 51 43 0 N, 3 35 0 W Grid Reference: SN 907032, QTH Locator: IO81FR Parking: Park in the forest entrance on the E side of the main road at SN923027 (CF44 9UF, N51:42:45, W3:34:15). Walk: 338ft of ascent in 1.33 miles. Easy summit – well defined track. Trig: TP2534 – Craig-Y-Llyn WAB: SN90 ...

As I was staying nearby in Dartmoor with the YL over New Years I decided to activate the SOTA summit of Kit Hill (G/DC-003) when the chance arouse. In the morning we had been walking on Dartmoor and towards the end we got a thorough drenching so we headed back to our holiday cottage and ...

Fan Brycineog – Wow! This activation was a real experience! I arrived at the base of Fan Brycheiniog at 11pm after activating another 4 summits in the area on the same day (13th August). I carried a large rucksack with everything I would need for the night and my 35 litre rucksack with radio equipment. I ...

Drosgol was my second Mid-Wales SOTA summit of the day. I had activated Plynlimon-Pen Pumlumon Fawr (GW/MW-001) earlier so I knew conditions were going to be wet, wild and darn windy! It took me about 10 minutes to drive around the Nant-y-Moch reservoir from my last activation parking spot. I arrived with the rain continuing to hammer down really ...

Have you ever activated a SOTA summit during a storm? No , me neither, until today! Turns out the storm even had a name, unknown to me then, Storm Desmond! I had a day’s annual leave to use up at work so I decided to visit Mid-Wales, booked some time ago so I didn’t really ...

This was a harder activation than I had anticipated. I chose to activate Wentwood (GW/SW-033) on my way home from the Brecon Beacons. I had done 4 major summits in the last two days so I was looking forward to an easy one pointer to round things off. Summit Details GW/SW-033 – Wentwood – 309m, 1 point Latitude: 51 38 39 N, Longitude: 2 51 9 W Grid Reference: ST 411943, QTH Locator: IO81NP Parking: Park in the car park (within activation zone – ...

Me and The YL went up to the Peak District to celebrate my birthday. Inevitably I ended up doing two activations on the Saturday (this one and Shining Tor), while mostly out for a nice long walk. I only took a 2m FM equipment, utilising my trusty Yaesu FT-270 with the SOTABeams MFD dipole, making ...