Tuesday 20th March 2018 was not a tour date as such, but I was due in a recording studio in Blackpool at 2pm, to begin putting tracks down for Joe Longthorne’s new album.  I was quickly running out of summits to activate “on the way to Blackpool”, but Longridge Fell was still available. 

First port of call though was Sounds Great Music in Heald Green, Manchester to pick up a piece of equipment I needed, and finish a deal on becoming an “officially endorsed artiste”.  Relevance?  OK, fairly tenuous with regard to SOTA, but the proprietor of the business, Mark, is licensed as G0WOA.

Surprisingly perhaps, I had not activated Longridge Fell for nearly five years, so well before my SatNav days.  It was very nice to be able to breeze into the start point without pulling in to consult the road atlas close to junctions of country lanes!  Again I went for the lightweight and bold approach of taking only my Yaesu FT-70D C4FM/FM handheld - so not even a rucksack. The walk is easy on a (mainly) good path, about a mile or so along a very slender gradient.  As I ascended, I saw five paragliders all floating amongst the thermals above the summit.

Upon arrival at the summit, one of them had landed and was untangling his wires from the heather. He hadn’t intended to come down there, and was trying to reconfigure things and attempt to get airbourne once more.  He was still battling away at this when I started my descent after the activation! 

Earlier, I had alerted the North West Fusion Group Facebook page that I would be QRV on C4FM.  Douggie G7CDA came straight back to my first call on 144.6125MHz C4FM.  He was the only one though, so it was 2m analogue FM for the other three.  At that point, no-one was answering on digital or analogue, and I had the session to get to, so I called it a day. Call it a “four-and-run” if you must. 

I got to the studio, where I worked through until around 7.30pm, then suffered a dreadful drive home, impeded by closures of the M55 and A34. I didn’t get in until 10.20pm. This drive only normally takes 80 minutes!