Saturday 1st September 2018 - Gisborough Moor G/TW-003, Urra Moor-Round Hill G/TW-001 & Cringle Moor-Drake Howe G/TW-002

Gig: Joe Longthorne

Venue: City Varieties, Leeds

The car park at Lord’s Stones Cafe was incredibly busy, but fortunately, there is not one, but two large overflow car parks.  I went to the second one and parked close to the gate to start my walk.  I was pretty tired now, so the initial section up the flagged stairway to the viewpoint was sluggish.  From there it is a fairly flat walk along the ridge to the summit - where I found another shooting party.  This group had just completed their shoot for the day, and were enjoying a boozy picnic beside the summit cairn.  They had many dogs with them, but all well behaved and pretty tired!

“You don’t have a problem with dogs do you?” they asked me.  I replied “Yes I do actually, but not as much as I have a problem with guns”, looking at the weapon on the ground by my feet.  Sharp intakes of breath all round…  We ended up having a friendly natter after that.  I looked longingly at their delicious picinc - it was now nearing 2pm BST, I was on my third summit, and I still hadn’t eaten during the day!  Oh well, a bit more hunger wouldn’t do any harm! 

I made six QSOs on the FT70D handheld, five on 2m FM and one on 2m C4FM.  One station had worked me on Gisborough Moor G/TW0-003 earlier, and sounded like he was now going to commence proper SOTA chasing.  It was still a fairly long drive to Leeds for my gig, and soundcheck was at 5pm, so I needed to get cracking.  After soundcheck, some of the band went round the corner to the historical Whitelocks Ale House for dinner and beer.  I had a vegetarian chickpea, spinach and mango curry, with coconut rice, and it was absolutely delicious.  The show was well received by a great Leeds audience too.

I was booked in at YHA Haworth for the night, and it was a bit of a stressful drive against the clock to get over there before locking-up time.  I didn't have time to check in there before my gig unfortunately!  Anyway, I just about made it, and enjoyed a restful night ahead of my second ever visit to Cracoe Fell G/NP-032 the following day.