At the start of June, @M0PVC and I set off on a three-day North Wales adventure involving mountains, radio, pizza, and callsigns that turned out to be somewhat inaccurate.
Day 1: Y Lliwedd and Yr Wyddfa
Departing the North East at an eye-watering 6am, we were on our way to the Nant Peris park and ride car park. This was Jake’s first ever proper trip to Wales (other than crossing the border briefly to go to Nando’s a few years back 
) so I was hoping this trip would be a great first impression.
Arriving at the car park, our streak of luck was only just beginning… we hadn’t quite realised that we were hopeless at reading a bus timetable, especially a bilingual one! We had no idea the buses were quite so frequent. Hiking boots on and bags grabbed at record speed, we somehow became the last people to squeeze aboard! On the bus, we chatted with a few folk about Crib Goch. We hadn’t planned this route, as of course we have too much to live for!! (We haven’t quite reached mountain goat status yet) 
Views? Absolutely stunning, of course. This is North Wales we’re talking about 
The walk we took up to Y Lliwedd (GW/NW-008) was not too difficult and put us in good stead for the big one… Yr Wyddfa (GW/NW-001). We much preferred the quieter Y Lliwedd. Setting up the 40m dipole and using our lovely 5w rewarded us with 14 SSB contacts on 40m, six on 2m, and two on 70cm.
We must admit, we didn’t really enjoy Yr Wyddfa. We’d fortunately arrived just before the train crew, so managed to get a summit pic without having to queue. We’d both agreed that if we had to queue for a summit photo, we simply weren’t having one! Whilst operating, we were spotted by a group of lads… “Is that radio?! Get any BIRDS on there” The answer was of course “sometimes!”… we are of course very inclusive in our hobby. This was a classic “you wouldn’t get heckled like this on any other mountain” moment! Safe to say, these lads may be better suited to the citizen band 
So what is all this about WET callsigns…
Well, you may know us by now… we like to make things fun and do things a little differently from time to time. We both applied for SES callsigns and were issued NoV’s from Ofcom for the following:
GB26WIW: WET IN WALES
GB1SIW: SOAKED IN WALES
Fun? Different? Never been done before? Slightly cheap? Probably 
Whatever you think… we had a lot of fun calling CQ with our Welsh weather themed callsigns! Only… it hardly rained at all. For the most part, we were completely dry. Awkward.
The unexpected tea time plans
We had a lot of lovely QSOs up on Yr Wyddfa, including our top chaser/summit-to-summiter, Tony, M9OUD. “Hope you’ve had a lovely time in Wales, Tony?” was responded to with “You mentioned pizza last week Tom, are you still up for that?”.
Shock, excitement, and many more emotions followed! We suddenly had the opportunity to have pizza with Tony 
It’s a funny thing, radio, isn’t it? You grow close to people but sometimes have absolutely no idea what they look like. Both parties were about to meet and neither of us probably knew who we were supposed to be looking for.
“See you around 7 in Bettws-Y-Coed at Hangin’ Pizza”…
That was said at 4:30pm, still at the top of Yr Wyddfa!!
What was I thinking?!
We still had to get down, get a bus, AND set up at camp near Tryfan. Weren’t we lucky that just as we reached the bottom, a bus pulled up. That lucky streak was still going strong.
Safe to say, we made it only 24 minutes late. Pulling into the car park, a gentleman was stood on the corner and he pointed right at us. CRAZY - he’s spotted us straight away? I wonder how he knew it was us? Silly me… it was the HUGE 2m antenna on the roof 
We had a wonderful time at Hangin’ Pizza (other pizza places NOT available in Bettws-Y-Coed) and enjoyed a truly epic pizza. We showed each other some of our equipment and it was just a really wholesome moment to spend the evening with a fellow amateur. I’m sure this is only our first meet up - more pizza needed soon 
Day 2: Tryfan, Glyder Fawr, but not Y Garn
There are few sounds worse than waking up in a tent to the noise of heavy rain and wind battering the fabric. The thought of leaving to go outside is one that takes true determination, but it had to be done… we were facing a big loop today.
Setting off from our rather waterlogged campsite at the base of Tryfan, GW/NW-008, we followed the AllTrails route up the chunk of rock. I have done Tryfan before knowing about radio and SOTA (what a shame!) so knew what I was getting into. Jake on the other hand, in his own words “this is the most technical mountain I’ve ever done”. It’s quite the tricky climb, isn’t it? This was all before we got to Nor Nor Gully, my favourite part of the Tryfan North Ridge climb.
We spotted Adam and Eve and Jake suggested we activate Viki and Rod style 
Him on 70cm and me on HF. If you two are reading this, you’re both trend setters - not that you needed me to tell you that 
It was a little busy for HF on that summit, so whilst Jake had almost qualified on 70cm using GB26WIW, I was just about finishing deploying the Slim-G for 2m. I was a little devastated that by the time I got a chance to have a go on 70cm, everyone had left 
We actually met a couple up there and one of them said “how many contacts have you had?”, which seemed like quite the question for just a member of the public. We explained a little bit about what we were doing and he said “Yeah, I have a callsign”. WHAT 
Turns out, he had been licenced a long time but has never really been active on the radio. What a shame. I do hope he takes up SOTA given how much he enjoys hiking. Of course we offered our handhelds so he could qualify, but he declined the offer.
Onwards and… downwards to the base of Bristly Ridge. No way we were doing that - not after last time! What happens on Bristly Ridge stays on Bristly Ridge! We took a left and decided to take the non-ridge route to the wider safer ridge along to the Glyder’s.
It genuinely felt like we’d been walking forever… but we finally made the callsigns somewhat true to name as it started raining 
We arrived at Glyder Fawr, GW/NW-003, just before 3pm and set up our Yaesu FT-4X and Yaesu FT3D handhelds with respective antennas. Jake nabbed 70cm again - good on him, and I started out on 2m. Contact of the day? EI/GM0SCA/P into mainland Ireland 
Poor Jake with these Welsh names - he’d certainly had plenty of Welsh language exposure during the trip. And no, Glyder is no more pronounced “glider” than Yr Wyddfa is just the SOTA reference “GW/NW-001”. Does that count towards spreading Welsh culture? Cymru am byth of course!! 
We were both wet, soaked, and cold. Maybe next time we’ll get a Cold in Wales callsign. In hindsight, we probably made the wrong call and skipped Y Garn. The next day we regretted missing the extra eight points and realised it probably wouldn’t have been as tiring as we’d imagined. I think it was Devil’s Kitchen that put us off, although we could’ve taken a safer route down. Good to know for next time. We got out of the bad wet and I realised I’d packed some Polish Kabanosi sausage in my backpack… yum! 
We weren’t done there… I’d seen The Cantilever on the way up and was now tired enough to not care about heights. Picture time 
We trekked back down to the campsite and of course I slipped. Matching injuries for Jake and I… we both managed to smash our right knees on this hike 
We got back to some absolutely drenched tents and decided on some pub grub in Bangor this time. Don’t ban me for saying this, but we ended up in a Wetherspoons and had a great time We were quite adventurous and created a green drink - great for the Green Green Grass of Home 
If anyone would like to know our secret concoction, let me know… it does wonders for the post-SOTA recovery… maybe!
Day 3: Home time 
Too windy and tired for another big one, Moel Siabod was struck off the list for the day. A smashing breakfast in Bettws-Y-Coed and we were on our way to Great Orme. It was quite the nice drive to Llandudno, and I told Jake about how the goats from the hills overran the town during COVID and reclaimed it… fitting for SOTA of course 
More on that here. An incredibly windy activation and we were certainly happy to not be on Moel Siabod!
After activating Great Orme, we were on our merry way back to the North East. What a glorious time we had in North Wales; we’ll certainly be back.
Thanks to all of the contacts, and if you made it this far, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed 
Catch you all very soon… VERY soon… at the GW/MW S2S event next weekend!
73 - Tom, M1TJM