Saturday 23rd April 2011 - Cleeve Hill G/CE-001

After checking out of Cheddar Youth Hostel, we found a cafe in the village for breakfast. This was necessary to delay things to the magical 10am time when the shops in the Gorge would open! The shopping was to collect a cool bag full of cheese selections to take home, a variety of Cheddar Ales, and a few small presents for Marianne.

Now it was onto the M5, and we headed for Cheltenham. In fact Jimmy directed me south around the town to the east, and up the lanes to Cleeve Hill for another SOTA activation. From the car park by the transmitters, this is a very short and almost level, easy walk to the trig point.  Jimmy M3EYP made 9 QSOs on 2m FM. I put up the 40m dipole, but opened on 21MHz. Five contacts included a highlight of 6W - Senegal which was very pleasing. on 40m CW, I made a further 26 QSOs, but at 1.15pm it was time to pack up and move on. I had another activity in mind!

   

The fact that Macclesfield Town were away at Cheltenham Town in n-Power Leage 2 action no doubt softened me to Liam's wish to extend the trip. It definitely influenced the choice of summit for the Saturday! We arrived at the ground and went into an adjacent community centre for a couple of beers and a pastie - after first cooling off with a Mr Whippy ice cream from the van outside the ground.

       

We then filed in through the turnstiles in the away end to join the rest of the Macc supporters who, unlike us, had travelled south that morning. I took the camera into the stadium and managed to get a funny shot of the Cleeve Hill transmitters standing just above the top of the grandstand! Tyrone Barnett scored the only goal of the game to give Macclesfield a deserved 1-0 victory before hitting the M5 and M6 north to home.

The weather was still glorious, and we had friends, including M0GIA, round for a barbecue. Most of my bottles of Cheddar Ale didn't last the evening!  A very enjoyable few days away, and, as ever, some SOTA activations weaved in with other stuff. Many thanks to the many chasers that worked us.