The sister in law had a pre planned visit to the Rochdale infirmary for a small procedure, that was going to take about 4 hours… hmmmm… Freeholds top! G/SP-011.
Its only about a 20-25 min run from the infirmary at rochdale to Sharneyford, and the start of the track up to freeholds top so it was cracking idea!.. except for 1 thing… the weather! The hourly weather was hastily pulled up on the PC and what do you know? dry from 1300 
its VERY unusual for the WX gods to act favourably on me, but hey… ill take it!
The start of the walk is a nice made up track called Limers gate, in the Village of Sharneyford a couple of miles East of the town of Bacup, but be warned it somewhat luls you into a false sense of security! and I somewhat understimated the time it would take me (and my still gammy ankle) to get up the track to the trig point! further up the track its made up of huge bricks and full of holes and chunks, that in the wet made the track quite hard going in places, with water completely covering the track over for large parts, facilitating the need to either wade or find an alternative! The path veers right near the end, and climbs steeply onto the moor plateu, with the wet weather this was by far worse than the track, and “bog hopping” was the order of the day, for the final tortuous 200M to the trig!
Just as i opened the gate to the trig area, lady luck ran out… the heavens OPENED! So a quick operation on the “rubber duck” was called for, I fired up VK portalog, spotted gave it a min or 2 and then called CQ, Quickly Paul @M0CQE came back to me, for number one in the log… “you know my friend, you are the only operator out in England today according to the spots” he informed me! Mind you, i wasnt suprised with the weather! it soon became apparent that paul was the only person who could hear me on the rubber duck, so with the rain pouring i stuck the trusty mast and Spectrum slim G up, and made another call… BOOM! Straight into 3 more M7ELO - John, G1JPV - Tony and G6XBF - Walt! gotta admit it was a releif to hit the 4 mark, it was more of a releif for the rain to be stopping too! I added 6 more to the log for a total of 10, that’ll do!
Anyhow the descent was more of the same, bog hopping, ankle crunching fun and it thankfully stopped dry! if i go again, i might try it from Shawforth next time… steeper, but shorter!
Oh, and im now on 20 Activator points! haha
Thanks to all the Chasers and those taking the time to read.
Alan
