They look similar to a pack of two we have, neither of which was thin enough to be able to slide under these tiny ticks.
To continue into Aberdeenshire.
9 May 2026: Saturday - Brimmond Hill GM/ES-086
We wanted to break our journey north to do a hill on the way, but a rain band was forecast over the southern uplands and central belt. Hoping to drive out the other side of the rain, Plan A was Torlum GM/SS-227, Plan B was Hill of Garvock GM/ES-085. A weather check at Stirling Services ruled out Plan A, so we continued on, and did food shopping in Dundee before continuing on the A90. It was still raining as we approached Hill of Garvock, though looking brighter ahead. Time to devise Plan C. We had intended to do Brimmond Hill from our new base near Alford, but it wasn’t far off of our route. By the time we passed Stonehaven, the clouds were breaking up and the rain had stopped.
We made our way to the small car park at NJ845087, needing to drop the car antenna due to height limited barrier. By now the sun was shining brightly with just a few fluffy white clouds in the blue sky. We found the narrow path leaving the left hand corner of the car park and made our way up through the mass of yellow gorse.
The path emerged onto more mixed moorland with heather, leading to the summit with antenna towers, war memorial, flag and white painted trig point. It was less than a mile to the summit, but past 17:00 when we got to the top. We had seen nobody else, so Caroline decided to use the seat to support the 2m antenna. But would there be anyone about for an unannounced late afternoon activation? Not long after a mountain biker appeared and some walkers came by. Martyn managed to find a place for HF without blocking any paths.
Caroline’s fears were soon realised with just one person responding to her on 2m and 70cms, so after Martyn had qualified with 5 contacts on 60m, she moved to 40m, getting 3 contacts to qualify the hill for her – with no further responses we packed up to descend. It had been a lovely day at the summit, but we could see clouds and rain further east and needed to get to our accommodation.
10 May 2026: Sunday - The Buck GM/ES-039
The forecast was for a fine but breezy morning with rain coming over late afternoon. Our first target was The Buck GM/ES-039. We found a rough pull in around NJ420254 on the B9002 road to the north of the summit and walked back down the road to find a gate with a grassy track leading off. The track soon turned to heather and then some boggy areas with before it got steeper. The path became faint in places but in general continued all the way to the rock topped summit. On the way up we faintly heard Mo MM7MOQ calling from GM/ES-019, but never well enough to manage to make the contact - a shame as that summit was one Caroline wanted to chase!
The trig point is perched high on rocks, and the summit gave good views all round, including some of the larger snow topped summits like Lochnagar. It was windy, so Caroline set up trying to shelter by a bit of a wall, but the wind kept changing direction. Martyn managed to get HF up, despite a couple of pole collapses. Radio conditions weren’t easy, but Martyn managed to get qualified with 5 on 60m, while Caroline struggled to 2 2m contacts and 1 70cms, after which she went to 40m, with a bit more luck than yesterday, eventually getting 10 contacts, including us both getting S2Ses with Simon and Helen Melhuish on Manod Mawr GW/NW-035 and M8BIA on Shining Tor G/SP-004. There had been a few spots of rain and more looked to be coming, so we ate a late lunch, while Caroline tried 2m again, with more success getting 2 more on 2m and 3 on 70cms, so she qualified on 3 bands, with Martyn on another one.
The wind had also become very strong, and rain was more persistent, so we were glad to be heading down the hill. With time and weather against us doing a second hill we took a longer route back to the cottage, checking out the parking for a couple of other summits on the way.
11 May 2026: Monday: Conachcraig GM/ES-019
A report on this has already appeared in ...meanwhile in Aberdeenshire - #13 by M3ZCB
We had previously hoped that we might be able to activate Lochnager. It was too snowy for us at this time, but is probably now beyond our aging legs. It took us 3 hours to cover the just over 3 miles up Conachcraig, and 2 hours on the way down (though that included an apple eating stop) and Lochnager is a lot further.
More Aberdeenshire reports later.