This summit was activated by myself, accompanied by Jimmy and Liam on Sunday 12th September 2004.   

As ever, the spiral widens, and we drive yet further to collect activation points! Jimmy, Liam and myself set off at 6.50am on the morning of Sunday 12th September 2004 and headed north up the M6 via a McDonalds breakfast at Lymm.

Exiting at J35, we followed the A6070 to Burton-on-Kendal and turned right towards Whittington. We turned left into the Plain Quarry car park (SD 552 761) where we parked for free beside an overturned and badly burnt-out VW. It was so badly burnt that you couldn't tell what kind of car it was, but Liam (car expert) insisted it was a VW, so I didn't argue.

       

This car park is not indicated as such on the OS 1:25000 map, but I recalled Riley G7GOD's report of this summit, and when I researched "Limestone Pavements" on the 'net, found a map with the "P" parking symbol on it at this point. This was only one of a whole sequence of useful items that are not acknowledged by the OS. The next was a gate and path out of the car park that first heads NW and then bends around to gently climb NE towards the summit. At a kind of "crossroads" in the paths, it was necessary to turn left, and this path then again curved round to the direction of the summit. This was very easy going on a good grassy track that was occasionally punctuated by fragments of limestone pavement. The gradient was very kind, and nothing like the "up and down" route through the grakes from Hutton Roof (as reported on Ann Bowker's Marilyn Diary pages).

Other reports (including Alan M1EYO's in the Yahoogroup reflector archive) refer to "walking in the forest", but most of it had been felled when we came through, and so we were in daylight mainly. We reached a gate through a wall (SD 555 772) and were    then on the open fell, where we soon found the trig point, a proper one (S5400), but not indicated whatsoever on the OS maps.

We set up with my inverted walking pole in the uncapped trig point and supporting the WASP and SOTA Beam. It was however extremely windy, and it soon became apparent that this was not an appropriate arrangement. I dispensed with the walking pole and just used the WASP going into the trig, which gave me much more vertical stability, but still no directional hold, not until Jimmy did that bit manually anyway! I worked just four stations, after which no-one was calling me, so I packed up, shared out the broccoli and watercress soup, and descended, ready to drive onto Whitbarrow G/LD-056.

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM using 2.5 watts: