This was something I had been looking forward to.  After all, the only reason a radio amateur like me took up hillwalking was because of SOTA.  And the only reason a hillwalker like Jimmy took up amateur radio was because of SOTA.  His QSL collection is growing at a much higher rate than mine at present.  Where my incoming cards trickle through the buro every blue moon, Jimmy seems to have weekly directly mailed cards from all you nice people in SOTA.  So I told him that he couldn't have a card from me until we made a summit-to-summit contact.

I offered him the option of being dropped off on Gun Moor while I zipped across to the Cloud and vice versa, but he wasn't interested.  However, when I told him that Steve G1INK had answered my call for another amateur to join our Sunday 4th December 2005 expedition party, this was a different matter altogether. What with all the new summits activated in 2005, would you believe it, I still had a couple of "local" ones left to do, and fairly easy winter bonus qualifiers at that.  Ponderosa it was! 

We met Steve INK at Poplar 2000 Lymm (Truck Stop) services for breakfast, and then spent the rest of the journey counselling the poor fellow after he was forced to part with a poorly octopus in order to leave his car there. The diesel in his renowned 2000-mile-a-pint car would have been cheaper! At the Ponderosa, it was chucking it down, nothing like the dry forecast we had researched.  We took half-an-hour over a coffee in the cafe, following which it was dry all day, so that was certainly 30 minutes well spent.  Liam and myself headed up the easy bendy track to Cyrn-y-Brain GW/NW-043 summit, while Jimmy and Steve took the longer undulating walk to Moel y Gamelin GW/NW-042.

At the top we found the Sotacache, and I made 13 contacts on the old converted PMR handheld.  I was mindful of the fact that INK and EYP junior are pretty fast walkers, and I wanted to be there to meet them at lunchtime in the Ponderosa, so I did a handheld only activation.  Saying that, I still made plenty of contacts over a wide area in all directions, the best being James MW0ZZO/P on Pen y Fan GW/SW-001.  Other S2S included Dave M0DFA/P on Long Mynd-Pole Bank G/WB-005, Roger MW0IDX/P and Rick GW0VMW/P on Y Garn GW/NW-037 ("Y Garn Two") plus of course Steve GW1INK/P and Jimmy MW3EYP/P on Moel y Gamelin GW/NW-042. Liam and myself put in a good pace and were down at the Ponderosa first, much to our surprise. 

Jimmy arrived just in time to place his order as I was at the servery in the Ponderosa.  Him and me had the homemade steak pie with new potatoes, roast potatoes, peas, carrots and gravy, while Liam had the cheese and broccoli bake with similar accompaniments.  Yes, that's right folks, no flask of soup today! Steve can certainly shift.  He was on the summit of NW-042 while I was halfway up NW-043.  He was still on NW-042 while I was halfway through my steak pie.  We hadn't long finished our dinners, and he was there in the cafe, ready for the next ascent.

Many thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM, mine on 4 watts, and Jimmy's later activation using 5 watts from his Yaesu VX-110 handheld: