After descending Seat Sandal G/LD-022, we began climbing up the track to Dollywaggon Pike.  We were the only ones ascending, but there were loads descending, virtually all having taken the Wythburn Path up Helvellyn.  I was surprised at this, as the Wythburn has got to be a much better descent than ascent, with the reverse being true of Raise Beck and the route up/down Dollywaggon.  In fact, there were several occasions when I lent a helping hand to very nervous women to steady them as they struggled down Dollywaggon, while Jimmy and myself ascended it with ease.

We were then rewarded with the easy level ridge/edge walk to Helvellyn summit, passing High Crag and Nethermost Pike en route.  We observed the bottlenecks and queues on a very slow moving Striding Edge and wondered how people find that fun!  The views all around were magnificent.  At the summit, I improvised to tie the SOTA Beam to the shelter and relaxed for a short while, enjoying some food and drink with Jimmy.  I had limited power because the plug on the power supply lead in my car broke the previous day, so I had been unable to recharge the FT-817.  Helvellyn was it's fourth activation on one charge, so I used just 500mW, which in fact proved to be more than enough.  I made nine contacts on 2m FM, and then the battery ran out.  I could have got the handy out, but I was pretty sure that no-one else was calling, it was nearly 3.30pm, and we were tired - and worse still, our 4 litres of water for the day had all gone with the entire descent still to go!

Jimmy maintained a good pace on the descent that I couldn't properly keep up with.  The aches and pains kicked in for the first time in the four days, and it was a relief to reach the car just after 6pm.  We had a coffee stop at Forton services and returned to Macclesfield at 10.00pm. The statistics over the four days of our Lake District walking holiday were:

Mileage walked:   38 miles

Total ascent:         3345 metres

Total descent:       3345 metres  (yes, what coincidence, but they did really work out to be the same)

Summits:                6          

New summits:        3  (4 for Jimmy)    [SOTA Uniques:  Tom 136, Jimmy 135]

Hours out walking/activating:  31

SOTA activator points:         50

SOTA chaser points:            24  

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM (using callsign GX4MWS/P - Macclesfield Wireless Society club callsign) with 500mW: