Well I enjoyed my recent trip to near Biggar. Stayed in a nice cheap B&B (though I wouldn’t stay there for a week). Nice walking and even some 2m activity including S2S! Biggar is apparently famous for its fish and chips, though I’m sure you get curry too
Not a midge in sight though past performance is no guarantee….
PS I meant to add (but was called away) - I can also recommend the Dunkeld area. If you’re staying for a week, Perth is a lovely place to visit when you want a change from the hills.
Forget the hot spots - just booked a few nights in Oban (tried our usual lodging near Fort William but the price, for June, made my eyes water). Oban is expensive enough right now.
Where is the Pinocchio emoji?
and again, especially as Braemar is one of the coldest places in the Northern hemisphere in winter!
We have an admittedly small sample set compared to you GM residents. However, @MM0EFI 's claims tally with our experience. Our holidays on the eastern side of GM have been enhanced by dry, sunny and midge-free conditions.
Maybe looking at a week around the Berwick/Galashiels/Peebles area and then a week around Perth/Kinross/Fife.
We did those in the opposite order in September - reaching the 500 uniques total thanks to the excellent weather and the small summits (not all of them and some were quite interesting). We had done many of the easier/short drive ones on previous visits.
Stayed a week each; just SW of Perth and E of Peebles. The log shows what we did from each.
73, Rod
Yes but I could only be around for one of them and my 70cms kit was fubared too. If 70cms was working I’d have waited to give Vicki 70cms QSOs on both. But I was stuck with 2m FM only . It was GM/SS-105 and very welcome it was to work you/Vicki as I’d waited 12yr 9mths to chase it.
EDIT: Getting old and my memory is fading (fast) I’ve completed GM/SS-104 on 13cms in 2018. Tom, go somewhere else please
Just to clarify Andy, in case it wasn’t clear, our objectives are our own enjoyment and activator uniques counts, not the whims of chasers/completists! However, if that latter consideration can be accommodated by chance from our choice of summits, then all well and good. But the choices will be made for far more selfish reasons, as they always have been
I haven’t forgotten that Barry - even the ever-patient and tolerant Tommy started to get fed up of it IIRC. But that was definitely an exception as our East side of GM experiences go.
Tom,
in terms of Perthshire I would look at Blairgowrie. Unlike much of Northern Perthshire its not really a tourist honeypot, but quite a nice town and a good selection of accommodation.
From a SOTA perspective tons of stuff within an hour drive!
Like you before me Tom, I will be visiting Arthur’s Seat and some of the Pentland summits for Completes in the week commencing July 3rd, but it isn’t a SOTA holiday like yours is - you should do really well and midges should not stop you I reckon… I will be with be on holiday with my walking XYL Judy. She can hammer my lack lustre performance now in climbing hills due to my poor state of health and painful left leg achjlles Judy is paying me back for making her suffer in years gone by! WE are urrently staying near Dolgellau this week, where there is a dearth of decent choice in pub food. Most pubs (possibly due to Covid) seem to feature almost the same menu’s, so once again tonight we are cooking for ourselves having bought some pies in Fairbourne - across the bay from Barmouth. Walking the footbridge there was fun the other day, and we caught the Cambrian line train back to Barmouth.
Last Sunday we thought we would have “an easy day” and activate GW/NW-065 Gamallt. Big mistake, what a killer. Absolute nightmare of a climb for me - only 17 QSOs as well. Poor show. Doctor increased my Beta blockers last week, not good for climbing I find. Self medicated and so I have now reduced my dose to what I was on before this week. We’ll see how I go on tomorrow. If it’s dry I will activate another couple of tiddler unique-to-me SOTAs on HF near Tywyn - GW/NW-063 and GW/NW-057. This time I will be carrying my handheld. I left it on the charger yesterday when we did GW/NW-074 and GW/NW-055 (Lovely summit and walk up - Foel Offwrm). Shame I missed MW1HAX/P who was abouve me on Cadair Idris - I was below Richard on GW/NW-074 Craig y Castel. Will see what tomorrow brings…
Ha ha, welcome to the club. My GP was very unhappy when I wanted to lower the dosage, to which I replied that I would cut the tablet in half. He told me I couldn’t do that, to which I replied “I can and I will”. Result - dose changed, but even at 1.25mg I find I am restricted. I like the 55bpm average though…
Paul and I have used Travelodges for many years - easy to start your day at 6 a.m., that is if you are so inclined. Perth is a great place for a pile of summits - we activated 20 in a week. That’s how to get your number of Uniques up. .
Very interesting about the Beta blockers and the effect on you when exercising. I have been on 5 mg for 18 months since I was diagnosed with heart failure plus atrial fibrillation but with also having a pacemaker with built in defibrillator fitted in February and the effect on me of increasing the dose to 10 mg being a negative one, I wonder now even more if I even need to take as much as 5 mg! I know we have different heart problems Gerald. Maybe cutting the 5 mg tablet in two would help me exercise better. I imagine if I run the idea past my GP of cutting the 5 mg tablet in two I will get the same reaction as you did. Thank you very much for you observations Gerald. I’ll see how I go today having gone back to my original dose.
Yes, Gamallt is a horrible climb from Abergynolwyn. We descended to the byway to the south-west of the summit so as to avoid going back the way we’d come up - facilitated by the offer of a lift from Aled MW0UPH! In the unlikely event that I’d ever activate this one again, I’d go up from there too.
Agree that the route up the NE side is not nice (and down even worse). Is there parking for the Byway? Our car is OK on gravel and shallow potholes but not for rocks.
73,
Rod
That’s a good point - I can’t really remember. As I was not driving or needing to think about parking myself, I don’t have a recollection of how feasible parking there was. Aled @MW0UPH would be the person to ask.
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