G/SB trip for Easter

Planning to be in G/SB land for the Easter weekend. Sadly doesn’t look like the weather will hold. Happy to meet up with any local chasers/activators, either on the hill or off it. Leave messages here or send me a direct message through this forum.

Mostly planning 2M FM but will have alternatives for some of the more awkward looking VHF peaks (unless some locals tell me not to bother?).

Plenty of mountain bike usage planned for access.

Hoping to get all 8 summits in G/SB during the four days, provisionally in the following combinations.
Good Friday 25th March - G/SB-005 Sighty Crag, G/SB-004 Peel Fell
Saturday 26th March - G/SB-001 The Cheviot (the only one I’ve been up before - a long long time ago), G/SB-009 Ros Castle
Sunday 27th March - G/SB-006 Shillhope Law, G/SB-007 Tosson Hill
Monday 29th March - G/SB-010 Housedon Hill, G/SB-008 Long Crag, followed by the long drive home to N. Wales.

Plans may shift due to weather - I’ll try to alert properly.

I’ll be staying near Wooler from the Friday night.

Did something very similar a few years ago.

http://tomread.co.uk/ros_hill_sb-009.htm

Each successive activation/day linked from near the bottom of each page. May be some useful notes in there for you.

Your plan for Good Friday looks a tall order. A famous poem rhymes “Sighty Crag” with “Mighty Drag” - and I can confirm it is very much that. Peel Fell is a fair old walk too.

Have a great expedition.

Not so much of a drag if a pushbike is ridden most of the way Tom these two, and riding there is a great time saver. Long Crag and Tosson Hill also suitable for a bike. Gerald said he was taking a mountain bike. You probably would qualify with 5 watts on 2m FM with an external antenna but it could be risky in my opinion if relying on 2m FM on them all. Success would depend who is around on Easter weekend in the North East / Lake District / Southern Scotland.

73 Phil

Yes I agree Phil. I completely missed Gerald’s note that he was taking a mountain bike!

Even after the bikeable section, Sighty Crag is still a dreary soul-destroying final slog to the summit though!

Oh you are selling it soooooo well… :smile:

It cannot be worse than some I have done in the Cairngorms or even some in Southern Scotland.

Noted! Thanks

Yes, it’s a rough walk from when you leave the bike. Remembered well. Couldn’t find a gate on to the access land, climbed the barbed wire fence. I was carrying a very cheap 5m travel pole bought on e-bay which became a 3m travel pole after that the Sighty Crag activation… I got one end of my dipole snagged around my leg unknowingly, while paying the other side out - CRACK :sob: :rage: !! I still got out OK there and on the other summits on the trip with the 3m pole and then I scrapped it on returning home and bought a better quality one. The forestry track on the white knuckle ride down from Sighty back to The Loan was full of sharp rocks and I punctured on the way down, but the speed just carried me to the gate where I had parked leaving just enough air in the tyre to save me pushing it back. It doesn’t seem like Cumbria there, but it is. I walked up Peel Fell the next one and then change the inner tube at the end of the day… England’s least visited Marilyn - Sighty Crag

73 Phil

Hmmm, I’ve been doing some reading and it appears that if instead you leave the track at the hairpin just south of words “Twolads Crag” on your map then you can follow a path north to the start of the access land and then turn East past the shooting butts to the summit. If there are shooting butts there must be some sort of path (he said more in hope than anything else), at least some of the way.

1 Like

I enjoyed myself silly on Peel Fell by sitting in GM and send a G/SB ref :wink: Anyway I was called at the same time by VE2JCW and VK5CZ on 12m CW. I walked it doing Jim G0CQK’s Deadwater Fell route. There are parts of the more remote forest which are like something from a fairy story with huge amounts of Lichen stands hanging from the trees. You expect to see a Gingerbread House through the trees, very atmospheric. The air must be very clean there. Keep your eyes open if you are whizzing along. The final ascent by the border is lovely too.

G/SB-008 Long Crag is something that cries for a bike as the forest section is tedious. Once you get off the track and emerge onto the moor then it’s top notch. The heather was in bloom when I visited on a lovely sunny day. A special and magic summit.

2 Likes

Look at that heather! Beautiful!

That’s the way I did it, though without the bike… fair but wet path to the edge of the access land, over a rickety wooden stile in the wire fence ISTR but not much of a path thereafter though if you’ve got a good imagination you can believe there might be one :wink: Somewhat rough, but the sea of heather was quite beautiful and the experience wasn’t as bad as I was expecting.

Enjoy! :slight_smile:

73 de Paul G4MD

1 Like

Here’s the view towards the trig. It really was a fabulous day and this summit is a well kept secret.

2 Likes

Ditto. It is not that bad - it is unfortunate that it has a rather negative reputation. I am sure that some of the GM/SS single point summits I have activated have been just as challenging, so if I were to activate Sighty Crag now I probably wouldn’t think much about it. As for a second summit in the day, no problem - I activated Blackwood Hill GM/SS-199 afterwards which was also quite a challenge… and in those days my pole and 2m beam were made of aluminium and I carried lead acid batteries. Oh how things have changed!

73, Gerald G4OIG

1 Like

“We guys who hills in Blighty bag
Might shy away from Sighty Crag.
It surely is a mighty drag
Enough to make the sprightly flag
When faced with forest, mire and hag
Shrouded in a whity clag.
But conquer and you’ll rightly brag
’I found the top of Sighty Crag!'
Descending is a further fag
And goes to show we’re slightly mad.”

2 Likes