Bank Holiday Monday, 2nd May 2005, then, and a pass-out for Jimmy and myself to go to the rally at Winsford. We might as well go first thing I thought, and bag some summits before - and after! We took breakfast at the Little Chef just after the end of the M56, and very nice it was too. We then continued towards Hope (Yr Hob) and Caergwrle and tried to find the little road that ascends to the farm near the summit. Jimmy enquired whether Hope Mountain GW/NW-062 would be "Mynydd Hob" in Welsh. After a couple of false leads, we did find the correct road, and as last year, drove directly into the farmyard, where there is supposed to be the start of a public footpath, but still all that appears is a sign about CCTV, "loose dogs" and "enter at your own risk". Sure enough, the dogs started barking and a lady came out to investigate. The mapped public footpath runs within 25m vertically of the summit, but the trig is in a private field. We asked permission to access the summit. The lady remembered us from last year and suggested the route to take, and said we could leave the car in the farmyard. In fact, I've still to be refused access to any private summit I've requested about.

The walk up to the summit was an easy five minute hop in glorious sunshine, interrupted only by a stride over / crawl under a live electric fence. The summit was qualified with difficulty. The RF breakthrough from the local transmitters was horrendous, worse then Billinge Hill and Winter Hill, and as bad as Great Orme. CQ calls were not answered when using the handy with its own aerial, so the SOTA Beam was hastily set up, and held by Jimmy. I then got the contacts, but couldn't hear Keith. It wasn't the squelch, but the local breakthrough that I couldn't hear him over. The herd of cows were very interested in our activity, and came to join us on the summit. We carefully danced out of the way of the saliva they were contentedly spitting at us. We descended to the yard and commenced the short drive to Moel Gyw GW/NW-053.

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM with 4 watts: