Last weekend (13 & 14 September 2025), Dan M0WUT and I (@M1GEO) took an impromptu trip to activate all of the G/TW summits as part of my casual quest to complete England. I managed to talk Dan into coming with me. Dan had recently purchased a KX3 on eBay and was keen to try it out since he hadn’t had it on air in the month or so since purchasing it.
We had originally “planned” (using the term loosely) to activate the more northern summits on the Saturday and then the more southern summits on the way back down on the Sunday. However, due to a slightly later start than planned, and needing to check in earlier than expected at our overnight rest, we flipped the two days.
We knew we’d need to be careful and quick with our activating, since all the weather outlets were forecasting a large storm, with strong wings and rain – they weren’t wrong!
My usual portable kit was still in the car, so I was covered. Suspecting that Dan would want to use 30m CW, I grabbed an EFHW for 30m from my shack before leaving home - that was last used to chase @M0VFC around Europe in 2019.
G/TW-005 : Normanby Top
Upon arriving at our first stop we sorted our collective radio gear out. I had my usual SOTA 20m and 40m dipoles and 7m SOTABEAMS heavy-duty pole. With some other bits of junk in the car, we managed to make the 30m EFHW into a serviceable 30m antenna.
G/TW-005 is a drive on summit. There’s no real walk involved. The trig point looked to be on private land and though others had, we decided not to cross the closed farm gates and instead operated from the roadside where many others had operated from, only sat on the grass because we weren’t prepared enough to bring seats!
Dan fired things up and started on 30m CW and got his 4 contacts (S52FT, HB9CGA, HA5AZC and SP318RAF) in no time at all. To keep things simple, I followed suit and activated on 30m CW working DL9LBR, HA5AZC, LB4MI and DC7AI, albeit at a slower speed than Dan.
Small personal aside, this first activation was quite something for me. I’ve been learning CW since January 2025, despite having been chasing with CW using macros and guesswork, I started my new-year’s 2025 with a plan to get active on CW unaided. This was the first SOTA I had activated on CW and the second time ever that I’d called CQ in CW. It was scary, and I made a mess of almost everything, but I had 4 calls in the log and I’m very grateful to everyone who stuck with me! My skills are “minimum viable” at this point, but that’s a start!
I was pleased that the CW worked out for me, since it meant that I wouldn’t need to carry my usual FT-891 SOTA radio with me.
G/TW-004 : Bishop Wilton Wold
At G/TW-004 we had a bit of trouble finding a suitable operating location away from the A166 which was quite noisy. Having parked here by the water reservoir we ended up walking back along Roman Road to here which felt like the most reasonable place to operate. Others had previously gone into the farm scrubland, but a quick check of an OS map didn’t show any public access so we stayed safe. Rain stopped play mid activation for me, but as this was the last activation for the day before a further 3h drive north, we stayed and worked a few more to activate POTAs we were also in. I again completed the SOTA activation with 7 CW contacts and a further 3 SSB contacts on combinations of 20m and 40m as we tried out different antennas we had available with our spare time before checking in to the accommodation.
Overnight Accommodation
We ended the Saturday with two rooms in The Wolds Retreat, York which turned out to be part of the Madhyamaka Kadampa Buddhist Meditation Centre just outside Pocklington, York. I assume we were out of season, and so Dan and I ended up with a complete building to ourselves with a shared bathroom.
When we booked it on Friday evening we were planning to be driving south and so this was mid-way between the cluster of northern summits and the two southern ones. The location wasn’t ideal for how we ended up traveling, but the rooms were clean and tidy and the staff friendly. I’d definitely stay again if in the area.
G/TW-001 : Urra Moor - Round Hill
To make the most of our long day ahead, we forfeited the included breakfast at the retreat, and headed out around 7:30am for the 2h drive ahead. We parked in the large layby as we’d gotten there quite early, but there is a large carpark about 250m north. The walk up took around 45 minutes, basically east along the Cleveland Way coast-to-coast path. Quicker than I thought it’d be, considering I’m not daintiest of people.
We were on air about 10:00am local time and were both quickly activated on 30m CW using the EFHW from G/TW-005 within about 20 minutes.
An obligatory summit selfie with the trig-point and we headed back to the car, where we arrived around 40 minutes later.
G/TW-002 : Cringle Moor - Drake Howe
The summit of G/TW-002 can be approached from the same layby/carpark as G/TW-001, and simply following the Cleveland Way west. However, this route is steeper and longer than other routes. We opted for G4OBK’s route approaching the summit from the west (walking east). We parked in the layby here but then noted the route go through the recommended parking area of Lord Stones Country Park. Again we took the Cleveland Way coast-to-coast path heading north-east towards the summit of G/TW-002. After about 1.4km you reach the Alec Falconer Memorial Plate and the path heads south-east past the summit. At about 1.75km total distance, we dropped due south to the cairn. The walk up took us around 40 minutes and we were on air at about 12:40pm local.
Dan activated quickly on 30m CW. However, when my turn came I was glad Dan’s KX3 had the auto-ATU since after making two contacts on 30m CW things dried up. I tuned around and there wasn’t anything else on the band. I called CQ for around 10 minutes on 30m CW to no avail, before switching to 20m CW and getting 3 in the log within 2 minutes.
After the obligatory summit selfie we were headed back down to the car again, and were there within 30 minutes. Due to time constraints and the impending heavy storm, we didn’t hang around to try Lord Stones café, but instead made do with our Sainsbury’s meal-deals.
G/TW-003 : Gisborough Moor
For Gisborough Moor G/TW-003 we again followed the guidance from G4OBK; this time selecting the route from Hutton Village to the trig-point. We opted for this route because it was around 1km shorter each way than the other routes. We were really racing the weather having checked rain-radar forecasts we knew we didn’t have long. We were both fairly certain that we’d end up back at the car soaked through.
We parked on Hutton Villtage Road and prayed that the car would still have wingmirrors on it upon our return. We walked up this seemingly unnamed road to where Phil’s track started (before first having tried to walk into someone’s back garden - the guy came out and helped us on our way). The start of this trail looks like (from Google Streetview here).
This trail takes you up and along to Highcliff Road, which is the same road as through the village, only now a bridleway. The forestry path above path cuts off 750m of walking, but is muddier and more scrabbly, so take your pick.
About 10 minutes in, and I had started flagging. More so from the realisation I was going to get soaked through at any moment! I did, at one point, consider turning back to stay dry, but I gave myself a talking-to, and pushed on - you see - G/TW-003 is a 5 hour drive (one-way) from home, so I didn’t want to have to go back; I really really hoping to head home having completed all of G/TW. I’d be disappointed with myself if I didn’t. I plodded along following Dan up the summit as both of us did our best to navigate to the trig-point.
We arrived at the summit after around an 1:10h of walking including a couple of stops for me. The wind had really picked up speed, and was blowing us around a bit on the more exposed points. We managed the usual selfie, and got to activating before the rain came!
As with several previous summits, Dan operated while I held the antenna pole. There’s no way it would have stayed up alone in the wind we had. I had my beanie on by this point as we quickly got cold once we’d stopped walking. We opted for 40m this time as 30m had been slow. Knowing we were racing a storm, we nudged a few friends too, and so 40m seemed the best for working club members back in Cambridge should we need to. We were on air by 15:40 local time.
Thankfully the activation was easy and 40m CW was busy. Dan found a frequency, called and was all done in 3 minutes! After a quick “QRX NEW OP” I hopped on and made 5 QSOs in a couple of minutes, too. And we were both still dry! We were both QRT within 10 minutes!
We packed away in record time, and started the decent as the gentlest of raindrops started falling on us. The decent took around 50 minutes and we were back at the car by 17:10 local, and still dry! We didn’t get more than a few spots of rain on us. We were both very smug having completed G/TW and stayed dry!
Wrapping up…
The drive home took around 4h with a stop off at Ferrybridge Services on the A1M to charge the car and eat some food. We also made use of the Octopus Energy free coffees! On the way home, the heavens opened!
I made it home around 10pm!
Thanks very much to everyone who worked us, it was greatly appreciated. A special thanks to anyone who worked me, as you’d have had to endure my clumsy keying!
Thanks and 73,
George, M1GEO.
but that didn’t stop me being even more nervous again, when I got my ham licence a few years ago - after a 50 year gap!!.