The 2012 Read family summer holiday was in Pembrokeshire, where we had a lovely cottage booked in Llysyfran.  After travelling down on Saturday 18th August 2012, we went out for dinner at the local Tafern Sinc, a cracking pub with sawdust on the floor, serving the most fantastic steaks, reared on the adjacent farms.

The first SOTA activations of the holiday would take place on Monday 20th August 2012.  This would be the agreed "full day out" for Jimmy and myself, meaning that anything further would need to be bagged early morning so as not to impinge on the family time.  In contrast to previous holidays' "full days out" where we would tackle a long walk over one or two big mountains, Jimmy planned a long circular drive taking in six summits each with short walks.  The motivation was both to acquire as many new uniques as possible, and to break our record for the number of activations in a single day!

We got up as planned at 5am BST (0400z) and had some toast for breakfast.  I also prepared a flask of soup to take for lunch.  Jimmy had done his research as usual, and directed me down past our local major town, Haverfordwest, and along the A48 to Carmarthen.  It was then down the A484 and B4306 before turning right down a minor road at SN519099.  This took us up to the parking spot for Mynydd Sylen, plenty of room in a very wide gateway.

Jimmy and I walked up the transmitter access road on the other side of the fence - for about a minute - and then we were on the summit!  In fact, the parking spot would have been easily within the activation zone, but we are purists!  Jimmy even more so than me, for he crossed the fence in order to lay hands on the trig point.  I remained on the tarmac of the transmitter road and began to set up the 40m dipole.  Conditions were not great, but there was nonetheless a reliable flow of ten chasers in eight minutes, at this early hour on 40m CW, as I operated as MO1EYP/P.  Things were not quite so straightforward for Jimmy 2O0EYP/P.  As expected, he didn't raise any interest from his 2m FM handheld, and came onto 40m SSB.  Four contacts were made within about ten minutes of operating, mainly thanks to chasers keeping an eye on our self-spots.

We packed up and "descended" to the car, in order to drive across to our second summit of the six, Mynydd Llangyndeyrn, GW/SW-039.