Drosgol, GW/MW-008 - 550m ASL - SN 759 878 - OS Explorer 213 - 2 SOTA points            

Thursday 20th August 2020

From Banc Llechwedd-mawr GW/MW-007, we'd dropped down the south-western end of the summit ridge to the farmhouse beside Afon Llechwedd-mawr (river).  A little further along was a wooden footbridge to take us over to the formiddable looking slopes of Drosgol.

As is often the case, "the bark was worse than the bite".  There wasn't really much hint of an established path but we did work our way up the initial steep slope onto some better more graded terrain.

Jimmy was ahead of me near to the summit, but stopped to attend to a broken zip on his trouser pocket.  I could see that he wasn't looking in my direction, so took the opportunity to sneak up and bag the summit before him, making it two-out-of-two for the day!

Like on the earlier summit, it was very windy right across the top, and we dropped in the lee direction to find a better sheltered position in the activation zone.

Like on the earlier summit, I tried to qualify the activation on my 2m handheld while Jimmy was setting up.  However, on this occasion, I only attracted Allan GW4VPX into my logbook.

Things were better for me on 20m, with plenty of contacts made on FT8 and CW.  Japan and Morocco were particular pleasing QSOs.

For the initial part of the descent, we went straight down a scree slope that we'd bypassed on the way up.  We then returned to the line we'd followed on the earlier ascent as we dropped to the first footbridge.

After crossing the river, obviously we didn't climb back over Banc Llechwedd-mawr GW/MW-007!  The idea was to follow the track as it contoured beneath the steeper slopes of that hill and get as near as possible to the next footbridge.  Unfortunately, Jimmy spotted some hikers ahead and preferred to give them a much wider berth than the recommended 2m social distancing!

This resulted in us having to progress over and wide expanse of appalling terrain.  Long grass coating treacherous bog was not fun, and Jimmy disappeared down several holes!  The final section beside the river back to the footbridge was much more pleasant at least.

I was ahead of Jimmy again in the day, and couldn't resist making sure that I beat him back to the car!  It was a rare occasion to have consistently beaten him for pace and stamina all day, so I intended to make the most of it and enjoy the unusual glory!  We drove home, collecting a supper from Happy Garden chinese take-away as we neared the end of the journey.