Yet another glorious day in Yorkshire. So today it was Sharp Haw G/NP-029 which is the lowest SOTA summit in England’s North Pennine region. It’s only about a 20 minute drive from my house so it’s handy for a short day. While very sunny it was colder than the last few days and very windy.
I’ve activated Sharp Haw before but that wasn’t the most successful outing so I was hoping for better luck. I parked in the usual spot on Bog Lane. It’s very appropriately named as much of today’s walking was all about avoiding the wet and muddy ground.
I was soon on the summit and set up using a depression in the ground as shelter from the wind. With all my layers on it was pretty comfortable. 40m CW only got me 5 contacts but at least I had qualified the summit. At one point it seemed like two stations were in QSO with me at once but I recorded one of those as a good contact. 20m CW got me 12 contacts and again there seemed to be some confustion at times as to who was QSOing who. One French station called me 3 times and when we finally concluded a QSO it was easy to see why as he gave me a very poor report.
I then took my handheld up to the trig point to see how successful that would be. To my surprise I got two contacts straightaway and I think I could probably have got more but I decided to go back to the shelter as the wind made it hard for people to hear me and wasn’t great for me either. I took down the HF EFHW and put up the slim jim on my 6m pole. This got me another 8 QSOs on 2m FM. These were mostly the same local chasers but with a couple of new calls too. Thanks to Nick G8VNW for putting a spot up for me.
Although not the highest summit you can see plenty of SOTA summits.
Buckden Pike ( G/NP-009), Great Whernside (G/NP-008) and Cracoe Fell ( G/NP-032)
Rombalds Moor (G/NP-028) in the distance on the far left
Pendle Hill ( G/SP-005) (and perhaps some others?)
Rather than retrace my steps back to the car I wanted to make a decent walk of it. The path continues along the summit and I could see a route into the woods but I decided to rejoin the public bridleway to Flasby. On the summit I had had all my layers on with the waterproofs keeping out the wind. After a bit of bog hopping I decided it was time to remove these excess layers as I was getting quite warm. And then almost immediately I slipped and fell on my bum so I got nice and wet! The walk continued on some nice forest paths. Just as I was thinking it was time to stop for lunch there was a bench just by
where the summit path comes down.
So this time a very successful outing on a nice easy one pointer as part of a pleasant (if rather boggy) 5 mile walk. Thanks again to all the chasers.