This summit was activated on Sunday 16th May 2004, by myself, accompanied by Marianne, Jimmy & Liam.     

Despite Marianne banning all talk of SOTA today, she did hint that we could move on for a walk later in the afternoon. We left the Hawkshead YH (very comfortable, spacious and friendly, but catering not as good as Stainforth and Grasmere Butharlyp How YHs) after breakfast and drove down for a look around Morecambe, a place we had never visited. We were quite disappointed, it seemed rather neglected, underinvested and ailing. I thought Frontierland was supposed to be a top range theme park, but it was a (closed) barren wasteland behind a high wooden fence. Nice seafront though.  Anyhow, Marianne had the idea of going in the local supermarket and buying items for a picnic, as it was such a lovely hot sunny afternoon. Did I have a suitable easy walk to a suitable picnic spot I was asked, and so it was destination Easington Fell SP-012!

This took a bit longer through the country lanes than I had anticipated, but our route took us through the Trough of Bowland, and so we pulled over the car, took the stepping stones over the stream and settled for our picnic there. We were not alone, with cars and families pulled in all along a 1-mile stretch of this road.

Continuing through Abbeysteads, Dunsop Bridge and Newton, we were then upon the parking spot at the summit of the road between Clitheroe and Slaidburn, and the start of the easy walk to Easington Fell. This time, instead of following the map-indicated PROW and getting tangled up in the unmaintained paths at the top, we took a sharp left as we approached the wood, and over the stile on the wall. Then we simply followed the vehicle indentations in the grass up to the summit, marked by a small cairn.

These late afternoon activations are a different ball game - much harder to rustle up the contacts, especially on a day like today when everyone is packing up from the backpackers, or finishing a picnic! It took nearly 30 minutes to get the 4 contacts, with a 16 minute wait between the 3rd and the 4th! The 4th was Shirley, who I "headhunted" from Steve G1INK's frequency for his Helvellyn activation, and Shirley, took the honour of being the person to get me to my 250 activator points landmark! I am pleased to have got there with two youngsters almost permanently in tow and taking no less than 104 activations to get there!

I got the summit-to-summit with Steve during the activation, and earlier chased GW4BVE & MW0YLS on Moel Siabod, G0MJG on Wild Boar Fell and SWL'd Riley on Winter Hill, but couldn't get through to him before I needed to leave the car and begin walking to maintain the goodwill of Marianne! Sadly, Riley was gone by the time I made the summit.

Thanks to the following stations, worked on 2m FM with 1 watt for the first two contacts, 500 mW for the third and 2.5 watts for the other two: