I was in the mood for a "proper walk" for the morning of Sunday 24th January 2016, so I decided to do Kinder Scout G/SP-001 while Marianne was preparing to go out to work a late shift, and Jimmy & Liam were enjoying lie-in #2 of the weekend. I set my alarm for 5am, knowing that gave me a head start of 7 hours before any of the aforementioned three would emerge from their bedrooms!  For some strange reason, I decided to repeat the long approach from Rushup Edge. I've really no idea why, as it is mostly dreadful underfoot. It's all very damp bog. There is a clear "path" that has been eroded into the peat - but I assess that it's far too dangerous to try walking on!

I was walking well before daybreak, and the first 90 minutes or so would be by headtorch. In thick fog as well, on featureless terrain like this, this was "challenging"! My first strike out onto the moor after leaving the bridleway did not go well - I found myself back on the bridleway within minutes. At first I was surprised to see the track as I wan't expecting it! I pulled up the "UK Atlas" app on my phone, which was working well with the GPS signal, and my current position pinpointed me, so I could see exactly what I had done! I fixed a direction and tried much much harder to walk in a straight line this time!

An hour or so later, and at last in daylight, I walked past the trig point on Brown Knoll. I knew that a few more metres and I would be onto a flagged path virtually all the way to Kinder Low. Upon reaching this path, I was interested to see the laminated notices about the footpath restoration project. It seems that by April 2016, there will be a continuous flagstone path from Chapel Gate on the initial bridleway, all the way to the point where I was now stood, just beyond Brown Knoll and by the flagged path towards Kinder. That would change the game completely, and turn this long strenuous route into a long easy route!

After a short stroll down to the Pennine Way, I was on familiar territory for the final ascent. Like yesterday, I had no phone signal, and of course, no RBNgate. I started on 2m FM using the 6m/10m trap antenna and made several QSOs. One of these was a known SOTA person - Alister M0BKQ in Leeds, who kindly spotted me on the 10m CW frequency I advised.  Just three QSOs were made on my 28.022MHz CW frequency before I started searching and pouncing. There were some conditions - a VK8 could be heard CQing clearly. I didn't get anything as exotic as that, but did add stations from Cyprus, Russia and Turkey to my log.

After more back-and-forthing between 10m and 2m (and my flask of Baxter's Chicken Broth soup), I worked a few more stations, all G's. I finished the activation shortly after 11am with 23 contacts logged:

10m CW: 6 10m SSB: 5 2m FM: 12

The walk back to Brown Knoll was fine on good paths, but then I face the long slog (paddle) over to Rushup Edge. In daylight, and decent visibility this was much easier and faster than the outward leg, but still hard work. Well I thought it was. The youngsters running it in trainers and flimsy pieces of lycra seemed to make extremely light work of it, jumping over bogs as though acceleration due to gravity had halved. I reached the car at 1.30pm, and was home by 2.15pm. A good work out, probably about 10km.