At some forgotten moment in time, me, Chris @2M0RVZ and newly licensed Mo MM7MOQ, signed up for the North Pennines SOTA weekend. Chris’s wife Rosie, along with dogs Monty and Ellie were going too.
And we’d be travelling and camping in our Land Rovers, Dora and Alan. So, that’s your eight.
Mo and I split the journey south, arriving at Ribblehead railway station at noon on Friday. Time for soup and a cake before heading on the anti-clockwise loop of the lovely Whernside G/NP-004.
Highlights included the viaduct, a bridge that took the path, a cattle trod and a stream over the railway line, and of course the fabulous views from the top.
When we were QRV at 1500 local, I wasn’t sure what to expect on 2m FM. Well, 45 minutes of pile up, with us qualifying the summit solely on S2S’s was what happened! Calls from the Isle of Man all the way across to Darlington. Fab!
I remember the fight to keep the Settle and Carlisle line open back in the 80’s. During our hike, the line was busy with one freight train after another, as well as passenger services, so that’s probably kept a million trucks off the road over the years.
Our loop completed, we headed to the campsite near Clapham, to find Chris, Rosie, dogs and Alan the Land Rover all in place. BBQ was consumed, wine drunk and plans hatched. A reasonable early start on Saturday should see us on the summit of Ingleborough G/NP-005 for 1100 local and before the worst of the forecasted “light” rain.
It didn’t quite work out like that.
We parked at the quarry pull off just to the north east of Ingleton and hit the main track up Ingleborough. As we passed the remote farmhouse at Crina Bottom, the cloud dropped, the tailwind picked up and the rain came on.
The final steep and rocky slopes were so thick with fog and heavy rain that we didn’t see the path at first. We were blown onto the plateau, navigating by gps to find the trig, which only then revealed the shelter.
Three operators, one radio, one waterproof pad and pencil. Let’s go!
Thanks to some patient and accomodating chasers, as well as a couple of alert summiteers, we were done in no time. Getting off the summit proved to be more difficult than getting on, however. The wind was howling up the escarpment and where it met the plateau, it formed a clothes shredding updraft that threatened our passage. Holding on to our hoods and to one another, we forced ourselves off the edge and down the wet, slippery stones. It was a good few hundred metres before we could relax a bit.
Back at the Landies and suitably damp, we decided the best course of action was to visit the fab bakery in Ingleton, then get cleaned up back at the campsite, and then drink lots of wine. We were joined for dinner by Tim @G5OLD and at one point had five humans and three dogs in the back of Dora.
With an equally rotten forecast for Sunday, we decided that heading somewhere drier would be good. The rainfall radar forecast said that place was the Scottish borders. I picked Broad Law GM/SS-029 as our target, partly because it was a shortish walk, a decent summit, and it was a great place to camp. (Mo and I had climbed it ten years ago in winter.)
We arrived at the ancient Megget stone on Sunday afternoon and set off on our hike up Broad Law in decent but breezy conditions. On the broad ridge that led to the summit, a shower blew across and the cloud dropped. At the top, partial views were revealed.
Chris and Mo did 2m from the trig and I retreated back 200m to set up HF on a friendly fence post. Conditions on 40m were dire. 20m was slow but after two contacts, nothing. The rain came on again.
Two figures ran towards me. “WE NEED TWO MORE!”. Worried that I would pack up as soon as I had qualified, Chris and Mo had legged it down to me. I also needed two more…
We shared the contacts, one for me and Mo, one for me and Chris. Eventually we got it done, but only just.
The weather cleared a bit as we descended, and when we got back to the Landies, we took a short drive and camped for the night at the Megget reservoir.
Some beer, wine, malt whisky, burgers and sweet treats finished off our day and our adventures. All that was left was the remainder of the drive home to Aberdeenshire, which we completed the following morning.
