This summit was activated by myself, together with Jimmy and Liam on Sunday 9th May 2004.   

From our earlier activation of Fountains Fell G/NP-017, we continued up the narrow lane between Pen-y-ghent and Fountains Fell bending left and to the North up to Halton Gill, and running over no less than seven cattle grids.  Jimmy remarked that it was very unusual, in fact never seen before, to have a road with an odd number of cattle grids.  I didn't have a clue, but accepted that he had obviously been monitoring this variable on our SOTA days!  In Halton Gill, all the obvious parking places were taken, so I backed onto a piece of wasteland, leaving room for Steve's car knowing him to be (probably) following me.  To check if his car was already there, I asked Jimmy if he could remember what Steve drove.  Liam immediately responded with the make, model and colour of Steve's car, remembered from meeting him once at the Cat & Fiddle.  I should have known to have asked the car expert! We walked to the top of the hamlet towards Foxup and walked up the green lane which leads through a gate on the right of the road.  The track climbs fairly steeply initially before bending around sharply to the right and levelling out a bit.  It was here that Steve caught up with us and chatted for a few minutes before resuming his own preferred pace and striking for the summit.  The rest of the way is a steady plod up the track to the coll between the true summit half a mile to the South and the trig point 250 yards to the North just 4m lower.  The coll between is easily within the 25m rule anyway, so this whole stretch forms the summit activation area, and we selected the trig point for the better photos for my website.

Steve was already set up and working Simon M1AVV/P on Top o'Selside G/LD-048. Steve indicated for me to grab a QSO for a chaser point from his gear, and I rushed over and crouched down to an unmistakeable tearing sound.  Yes, I need a new pair of walking trousers, unless my mother can work the magic on her sewing machine.  Steve continued working all the chasers on 2m (pity he didn't leave any for me hi!), so I waited and had a tune around 40m in case John GX0OOO/P was still working from LD-001. No SWL points were found, so I tried a few calls on 70cm, but no takers. However, Steve then went to 70cm, so I jumped onto 2m and worked chasers Shirley and Ron, and then summit-to-summit with Stuart G0MJG/P and Keith G0OXV/P on Great Knoutberry Hill G/NP015.  This took me to a pleasing day's haul of 39 chaser points.  Steve was comfortable and obviously not intending going anywhere before he had clocked up many more QSOs, and was in the queue for Stuart and Keith anyway (shouldn't SOTA activating stations have a "front of queue pass" in these pile-up situations? - Discuss!).  However, we needed to get moving to get the boys (and me) home in time for a decent kip before school. We retraced our route, and even our eating arrangements, grabbing our supper at the McDonalds on the A56 on the way home.  Home was achieved at 8.10pm, and bed wasn't long after.  I went to the SOTA chatroom for the regular Sunday night chinwag and found Keith and Steve in there, but they didn't talk to me and left the room without saying goodbye.  I had by that time had a bath and applied deodorant after my day's walking, but maybe it was the wrong brand...

Thanks to the following stations for calling in: