Our latest activation of Pendle Hill took place on Saturday 28th February 2004.   This had very little to do with what I had posted on the SOTA Diary, both in terms of location and ETA!  The original plan was to jointly activate Mwldwl-eithin GW/NW-047 with Shirley MW0YLS, but when she 'phoned me on Saturday morning to report the heavy snowfall overnight in Wales, and her rather understandable unwillingness to re-break her slowly recovering arm, reconsideration was in order.  A check on a weather site on the internet confirmed that the area of central North Wales was still forecast to be enjoying arctic temperatures throughout the day, but in contrast showed Lancashire to be clear, dry, sunny, and a good 10 degrees warmer!  We pointed the car north instead of west!

We were at the parking spot on Barley Lane (same one as 2003) by around 10.45am, from where we took exactly the same route up to the summit.  This starts with a pleasant horizontal walk along a PROW which is also an access road for a farm and residence, up to the steep slopes of Pendle Hill.  Maps indicate a PROW directly up this slope from here, but it looks improbably, lethally steep, and I've never seen anyone take this route.   Instead, there are more graded (although still steep as far as the knees are concerned) tracks swinging away to the north or south of the summit plateau.  We again took the main track to the north (Pendle Big End), from where it is a gentle stroll up to the trig point.

Rarely, all four of us were out today - Marianne, sporting her new boots, fleece, hat and gaiters ("ouch" remarks my wallet) joined Jimmy, Liam and myself, something that I hope will happen more frequently this year.  At the start of the walk, Jimmy confessed that he had forgotten to put his coat back in the car after he had nipped out on an errand back at home, and that his gloves were in the pockets!  Thank goodness I had packed some "textbook" rucksacks with spare clothes!  His missing coat was replaced with an extra fleece and a spare waterproof, and I was also carrying a spare pair of gloves.  As usual, the summit of Pendle Hill was very windy, so we dropped away to the relative calm of the peat banks a few metres NW of the trig.  The SOTA Beam and FT-817 were set-up, following which the summit was validated in lightning speed by Keith, John, Shirley and Alan all there waiting for me.  In total, 11 contacts were made, 10 on 2m FM and 1 on 2m SSB.   Two summit-to-summit contacts were Clive M1YAM/P on Thorpe Fell Top G/NP-025, and Steve G1INK/P on Bosley Cloud G/SP-015.

On the way down, I met Colin M0CGH, who was on his way up for one of his first SOTA activations, having learned about the programme the previous week.  Back down in the car, we drove a little way down the road to the Pendle Inn.  As I parked, I worked Colin for the chaser points, then going into the pub for lunch and a pint.  Just over an hour later, as we were setting off back to Macc, thanks to a tip from Steve G1INK/P still on The Cloud, I also worked Roger MW0IDX/P on Creigiau Gleision GW/NW-028 to bring the day's chasing haul to 9 points.  Back in Macc around 4pm, Steve was still on his summit going for another 50+!

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m, all FM except G8AXW on SSB, using 1 watt down to G4FQW, and 2.5 watts thereafter: