This summit was activated by me, accompanied by Jimmy on Saturday 22nd November 2003.   

Once upon a time, in the sleepy Lancashire village of Ormskirk, the unscrupulous G0OXV hatched a devious and cunning plan. The plan was to enhance his already unstoppable chaser score by contriving several high-scoring activations all within a few miles of himself.   It was only while at the SOTA LD weekend Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd November that I uncovered the dastardly truth about the event. Myke G6DDQ superbly constructed and coordinated the whole weekend, but eyebrows were raised when we learned that it was in fact Keith who first thought of the idea!  Joking aside, it has to be said that Myke G6DDQ put a lot of time and effort into making the bookings, payments, ordering food etc and collecting in the money. The result was a fabulous weekend of hillwalking, radio, good wholesome food and fine company.

First in at the excellent new Grasmere Butharlyp Youth Hostel were Myke G6DDQ, Chris G3XWB and Stuart G0MJG. They were enjoying a hearty evening meal at the hostel, consisting of home-made lentil and tomato soup, toad-in-the-hole and syrup sponge pudding. Jimmy and I joined the dinner even before finding our room. The hostel food proved to be excellent throughout the weekend, with nice home-cooked meals in the evening, and walking-power breakfasts of porridge followed by full English. The YH provided packed lunches for walkers proved to be tasty and substantial, Jimmy and myself partaking for both the Saturday and Sunday. The rooms were very neat and tidy, recently decorated, and close to good facilities such as well-equipped (and clean) communal kitchen, TV lounge and good showers.

Shortly after dinner, the 5 of us wandered down to the Lamb Inn (the public bar part of the Red Lion) where we met Keith G0OXV. We enjoyed a few pints of Theakston XB bitter, scotch and dry, fruit juice and tap water (can you match the drinks to the participants?) while catching up.

   

On the Saturday morning, we set off in three groups of two. Stuart and Keith took on Stony Cove Pike G/LD-018 from Kirkstone Pass, Myke and Chris went for High Raise G/LD-019, while Jimmy and myself drove up to Keswick and back down to Borrowdale and up Honister Pass. Alan "The Lark" M1EYO would have been well on his way to Lingmoor Fell G/LD-040. We parked at Honister Hause YH (£3 for the day) at the highest point of the pass before heading up the path from the opposite side of the road. The climb was pretty straight-forward, quite steep initially, and some little bits where hands were needed to steady oneself.  The walk followed a fence, in which there was a stile at one point.  We continued past the stile, but noticed as we continued that on the other side of the fence was a more graded path with a better walking surface. In future, I will try to remember to cross that stile! A little further up the fence ended and we then had a gentler gradient to ascend to the summit, marked with a nice large "dry stone" trig point. This trig is right on an exposed edge though, so Jimmy & I kept our distance from it and didn't dare look over the edge!

We erected the SOTA Beam and set up the FT817 as the summit became quite busy.  We endured the usual jibes about being Soviet spies and were asked if we could receive the World Rugby Final between England and Australia on it via satellite!  We then had the "blitz" that Myke had envisaged in formulating the weekend, with no less than 8 SOTA summits simultaneously in operation. The LD groups were Tom M1EYP + Jimmy on Dale Head G/LD-020, Keith using the Southport club call of GX2OA/P and Stuart G0MJG on Stony Cove Pike G/LD-018, Chris G3XWB and Myke G6DDQ on High Raise G/LD-019, Alan M1EYO now on his day's second summit of Loughrigg Fell G/LD-047 and Shirley M0YLS on Coniston Old Man G/LD-013. Joining in from afar were Riley G7GOD on Winter Hill G/SP-010 - a repeat "pointless" activation, presumably specially to join in the LD activity, Roger MW0IDX on Moelwyn Mawr GW/NW-016 and Dave MW0DFA on Pen Llithrig y Wrach GW/NW-013. This meant a total of 40 chaser points available at this one time, or 40 less their own summit for the activators. Keith's plan had worked!

It was great fun to work through this network on summits, and although a few frequencies on 2m FM were used, we all sort of naturally converged on a single channel, that being the one established by Shirley. Many stations apologised to Shirley for hijacking her frequency, but she did not seem to mind. Perhaps, like me and Jimmy, she was basking in the remarkable summit conditions of warm sunshine and no wind, while enjoying a drink and some lunch. I switched to 2m SSB to work Keith and Stuart on Stony Cove Pike, and was also able to work the Birmingham Three of Don G0NES, Graham G4JZF and Peter M0COP and give out the chaser points (and WAB squares). For the first time we had carried a hot flask out with us on a walk, and the mulligatawny soup went down well and will no doubt continue to feature! The other stations were not moving onto further summits, but we were, and so after 17 QSOs (thanks also to GW3GUX, M3CKN, GW4PUX & G4RQJ) we packed up and moved on down Hindscarth Edge towards our next summit of Robinson G/LD-021.

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2 metres: