From Foel Fenlli GW/NW-051 on Monday 25th February 2013, I continued on the Offa's Dyke Path up to Moel Famau summit.  There are more direct lines that can be taken from Bwlch Penbarrass car park, but all involve extra and unnecessary height gain which is then lost.  Not for me, so as usual, I stuck on the lower main track.  During the morning so far, I had noticed two parties in vehicles unlocking the barrier and driving onto this track, so I presumed some work must have been going on at the summit - and there was.

At the summit, I was greet by a very ugly building site surrounding Jubilee Tower.  There were metal fences, 4x4 vehicles, a JCB and a portaloo.  I asked a young lady project worker what was going on.  She explained that all the rubble around the base of Jubilee Tower was never part of the original structure, it had just been pushed up there.  Her team were now removing all that rubble, investigating the foundations of the tower, and giving it a general clean up.

I moved myself downslope to the west, to get away from the building site, and achieve a little shelter from the cold easterly wind.  Up went the 40m dipole and I was all set to activate.  But then the young lady I had been speaking to came down from the summit to see me.  "Have you cleared this with the council?" she asked, pointing at my fishing pole and wire.  "How long is this going to be here for?".  I explained that I only intended being here for around 25 minutes, and that as it was a low-impact temporary activity, I understood that permission was generally not required explicitly for such an activity.  She said she would go and speak to her supervisor and give the office a ring.  I said that if she returned and instructed me to take down the aerial, I would do so without question.  She didn't, and I grinned at the irony of the level of public nuisance and eyesore I was causing compared to the project a few metres above!

So, on with the activation, and on with the first delicious swigs of mulligatawny soup from my flask.  A blitz of 34 QSOs in 17 minutes had me nearly ready to pack up, but I was tipped off, both on air, and via SMS about a potential summit-to-summit.  A few minutes later I made the QSO with Ian MM0GYX/P on Corryhabbie Hill GM/ES-031.  It was now time to pack up and descend, and an extra summit - Penycloddiau GW/NW-054 - was very much on my mind.