After our Wednesay 11th April 2007 descent of Foel Goch GW/NW-039, it was nearly five o'clock local by the time we had reached the car, and would normally have seen an end of the day's activities. But we were booked in a local Travelodge, and the time was our own. Jimmy was allowed to navigate to get us across to Moelfre Hall, our preferred start point for Gyrn Moelfre GW/NW-049. The route was tortuous, high, winding, poorly signed, seemed to go on forever, bore no resemblence to the map, mileages all wrong etc. "This road seems to be going a lot further and in different directions to the map" remarked Jimmy. "Welcome to Wales son" I replied.

I rang the doorbell at Moelfre Hall to ask permission to leave my car in the large yard while we walked up to the summit and back. "About two hours" I estimated. The lady was agreeable, so I thanked her and commenced this early evening walk. We were now able to recall that it was indeed April. The early afternoon heatwave had plummeted and it was now very cool, demanding full deployment of fleeces, jackets and hats.

       

The walk up the steep channel was again sluggish with Liam, but not as bad as Foel Goch earlier. Again, Jimmy had skipped off ahead. To save time messing with guys, we mounted the upside-down walking pole in the wire fence, and then added the WASP and SOTA Beam on top of it for a quick and easy set-up. "There'll probably be no-one around with it being so late" remarked Jimmy. "The opposite" I replied, "There will be evening nets all over the place, and we have the best take-off towards Merseyside, Manchester and Cheshire we have had all day". It was indeed an easy activation, 9 contacts in 17 minutes, with at least 8 from known SOTA chasers.  Many thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM with 2.5 watts:

I was now very tired, as were the boys. Every time I planted my foot down on the descent, my entire leg shuddered in exhaustion, making this a rather unpleasant descent. On the lower reaches, the light began to fade quickly. Use of headtorches was avoided, but full darkness did fall as we finished packing rucksacks away into the car boot at 9pm local.

At least with a Travelodge you can turn up however late you want, so we left that for now and drove into Oswestry and the first Indian restaurant we could find. I think it was called the "Shimla" or something similar, but it was outstanding, with all three of us enjoying one of their speciality Bengal fish dishes at some stage in our meal. We eventually made the Travelodge, at Oswestry Mile End service area, at about 11.15pm. Liam had the pull-out floor bed, Jimmy had the settee-bed, while I had the big double bed. It is important to teach children about the importance of hierachy. We all slept soundly and deeply, ahead of our planned morning assault on Y Golfa GW/NW-061.