The small car park was jam-packed on this hot sunny Bank Holiday Monday, 2nd May 2005.  There was no sign whatsoever of the forecast thunderstorms, and we thought / hoped our luck was in. The car park was so overcrowded that we had to improvise by perching the car on a small grass verge between two other similarly parked vehicles.

We left through the gate and immediately branched right to climb the narrow path between the wood and the wall. This is the signposted route of the Offa's Dyke Path, although most people continue their walk along the lower track from the car park. On the early part of the ascent I worked Charlie GW0PZO/P on Glyder Fawr GW/NW-003, and then once on the open ridge, got in QSO with Roger MW0IDX/P (at the QTH of Brian MW0YDX and Barbara MW3GBD) to advise of summit time. Roger advised of the lightning strikes over Anglesey, and promised us he would get me a latest update. When the update came, it was still over Anglesey. We still had warm blue sunny skies. So far so good. As we entered the activation zone, I had a QSO with Sam M0SJJ/P on Helvellyn G/LD-003, and we sat by the cairn to work some more.

Roger advised that the storm had now hit Conwy, so we quickly a couple more stations, and hurriedly packed up. We began our descent, advising those passing in the other direction of our weather news. As we dropped off the summit, there were very sudden ferocious winds into our faces. This was then joined by torrential hail, blasting horizontally and extremely painful. The was a torturous five minutes until we received the shelter of the wood of tall tress on the west side of the path as it began to descend to the car park, but by this stage, we were both drenched from head to toe. Our waterproofs were no match for the ferocity of this storm.

Back in the car, we turned the heater on full blast, hung our jackets over the driver and passenger seats and stripped of as much of our wet clothes as we could without getting arrested. We then headed for the A55, stopping at the first garage so we could properly change into our spare clothes and get a couple of essentials dried out under the hand dryer! The only things that could not be dried/replaced were our walking boots, but our fourth and final walk of the day - Raw Head G/SP-016 - could be comfortably done in trainers anyway.  

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM, the first four with 4 watts from the Icom converted PMR handheld, and the rest with 0.5 watts from the FT-817: