In a week or so I’ll be leaving The Shire and crossing the River Sark northbound into GM country making a round daytrip to Glasgow to pick up my dear wife. I’ll have time to kill on the way up and want to take a break or two from driving to play radio. Hitherto I’ve always done one or two SOTA activations but this time I’ll have the dogs in the back [and sadly the arthritic 14-year-old is well passed his hillwalking days] so my plan is to find somewhere I can park - not too far from the A74(M) – and do some CW HF chasing in the car with my HF vertical mounted on my large 3-pad magmount on the Passat roof.
I reckon the location has to be in or south of the Southern Uplands to get a good take-off into Europe. Now that bridge over the motorway [is it near Ecclefechan?] where the big police speed camera van parks [I meant the van is big, not the camera or policeman] would be ideal except they probably wouldn’t move if I asked them.
I don’t think any of the service stations are suitable so I’m expecting to have to find some parking place on a road off the motorway. I don’t mind making a reasonable diversion. And this is where I’m looking for local knowledge. Can anyone help?
Going North, leave M74/A74(M) at J16 Annandale Services.
Take the slip road to the 1st roundabout, take 1st exit Johnstonebridge B7076.
Road bends left then right then comes to T junction. Turn right onto B7076
Approx 300m on left is unamed C road, turn left into this.
Road climbs, approx 1.7km is track on left hand bend. Hardcore standing, track goes into field, loads of space. Somewhere to set up and exercise dogs. Unlikely to be huge amounts of traffic.
Or continue to junction, turn left onto B7020. Travel about 600m and there is layby on the left at the entrance to a track to a plantation. There is a motorhome parked in this Google view.
Road will be busier. Again somewhere to exercise dogs and space to setup antenna. They are not terribly high but ground to EU slopes down and you are before bulk of Southern Uplands.
You can leave and rejoin motorway easily and can call into services if you want a hot drink etc. Or you can get your wallet emptied as Mrs, FMF was down the motorway to Englandlandshire the other week saying the service stations are charging £1.499/L for petrol.
Yes. The Google streetview there is rather old but there were wide double gates into a new plantation area on the left (heading north). I parked there. Worked for me.
