Thursday 30th April 2026: GM/SS-126 Earl’s Seat
With the weather still looking good after my previous activation that week (GM/SS-090: That'll Dubh Nicely) I decided the sensible thing to do a couple of nights later would be the same thing, but with marginally better preparation, and sure enough, it actually paid off! My hill this time would be the Earl’s Seat, GM/SS-126, in the Campsie Hills to the north of Glasgow.
My escape from work this time was slightly more effective, and instead of Bart Simpson on a skateboard zipping home, you had a moderately tired ham radio operator on a mountain bike avoiding stoned people in the park. This time, once I got home I remembered not only to pack my fibreglass pole and its new rubber bung, but also the Slim G antenna itself, and a wee bag of guy lines and pegs (which I didn’t end up needing anyway).
My route started at the Glengoyne Distillery, and after a short warmup, started pulling very steeply up the path towards Dumgoyne, before carrying round to the west of Dumgoyne itself.
It almost seemed criminal to skip by Dumgoyne, one of the finest wee hills in this part of the world, but I was on a schedule, and I’d save significant amounts of time by omitting the extra metres of steep ascent.
With my running kit on, there wasn’t any point in even pretending to run on the steep slopes towards Dumgoyne, I was making a pretty punchy heart rate just hiking my way up. I had hoped to do something a bit more runner-esque once the ground levelled out beyond Dumgoyne, but the downside of the flatter ground was that there was less place for the bogs to drain to, and I had to use a fair bit of energy just negotiating the bogs.
Eventually, the summit of Earl’s Seat came into view, and more grassy boggy shoulder-top was covered, with a reasonably easy-to-follow grassy path.
On arriving, I was able to rig my Slim G to the fibreglass pole, and rig it up to the fence which runs directly over the top of the summit, meaning I could sit myself on a wee rock down out of the breeze. Sadly the trig point had its hole permanently filled in, but after having to remove a bottle of old Lucozade Sport from the one on Hill of Stake, and later a can of Red Bull from the one on Duncolm, I wasn’t too upset at the decision.
This time, the contacts were absolutely rolling in - rather than the previous night where I was barely able to wring four contacts out of the 2m airwaves, this time I had to stop on account of running out of daylight. Unsurprisingly, there weren’t any S2S stations out and about at this time of the evening, but I did manage to reach across to Belfast for one QSO.
I’d like to apologise to the first couple of stations I spoke to - I’d given my summit reference as GM/SS-125 (Scald Law in the Pentlands) before having my doubts, and Ken @GM0AXY kindly confirming that I was in fact on GM/SS-126.
The view across towards Loch Lomond was very pleasant when I arrived.
15 contacts in the log, I was starting to reach the stage where I was running low on daylight. I’d allowed myself to keep operating til around 2030 local time, but I snuck a couple of extra contacts in til around 2040, when I just had to make a firm call to go QRT and get out of there. Although I have a good head torch and I’m fairly experienced running trails at night, it does significantly increase the risk of stupid stuff happening, so I ideally wanted to avoid using it if possible.
Anyway, I needn’t have worried too much, as I spent most of the descent stopping to look across at yet another gorgeous sunset over Loch Lomond. This was one of these truly amazing runs where the downhills on soft grass felt an awful lot like something close to flying, and with the incredible views, I was only having to reduce the big stupid grin on my face to try and keep the flies out of my teeth.
Even the view looking away from the sunset was brilliant, with a big full moon sitting low in a purple sky.
Eventually, the sun disappeared behind the Argyll Hills, leaving me with just about enough daylight to stop me from needing to put the head torch on, and the downhill being steep enough to make progress nice and rapid. The main obstacle at this stage was the number of sheep and their daft wee lambs out on the hill, most of whom looked thoroughly confused at a grinning human idiot attempting to run across their hill. In a fairly non-scientific test, I found that shouting at them in my dodgy Duolingo Spanish (venga, venga venga!) and clapping my hands was the most effective way of getting them out of the way from a long enough distance to avoid any close-range spooking.
Ach, go on then… one last picture of the sun disappearing behind the hills.
