We set off from Macclesfield just after 11am BST on Saturday, my birthday. Within twenty minutes or so, we were on the M56 and in QSO with my fellow Maxonian Richard G3CWI, doing a repeat activation on Shining Tor SP-004. A nice and unexpected 2 points for me, even though nothing for Richard, it being a repeat activation. Repeat activations seem to be becoming ever more popular, with people using small pockets of time that would be insufficient to travel out to a new Marilyn, to wander up and activate one of their local hills! I had started to warm to the idea of doing some local "pointless" repeat activations, and have earmarked Shining Tor myself to nip up if I am trying to chase into the NP summits that always seem to elude me on my highest mobile locations. Indeed, my weekend was to culminate with my first repeat activation, on Great Orme NW-070.   After reaching Conwy on the A55, we needed to head towards the town centre before taking the B5106 in a southerly direction. Just as we were ready to take lunch before heading onto Tal y Fan, just by our turning for Rowen was The Groes Inn. So in here we went. Food was good, but definitely the more expensive end of the spectrum! No children's meals, just "smaller portions" available for £6.95 each! Still, it did the trick and we were already late for our scheduled meeting with Maggie MW3JAT and Josh MW3EPA at the start of the walk, so no real time to "shop around".

We turned right off the B5106, by The Groes Inn, signpost Rowen. We continued to follow the road through Rowen in an ESE direction, including through a couple of gates that Jimmy needed to hop out and administer. At the end of this road we turned right and headed up the hill and around the corner (with a wide public footpath/track going off to the right) before pulling in to park on a clearly defined space on the grass verge, a few metres from the stile at SH 732 716. By this time, we were in contact with Maggie MW3JAT and Josh MW3EPA on 2m, but they had got lost in the small lanes and to top it all had car trouble. Leaving Marianne, Jimmy & Liam on the grass verge in the lovely sunshine, I set off around the lanes to find them, using the radio, and some regular blasts of my car horn, as indicators to proximity! Eventually, the duo were found safe and well, and transported back up to the path start, where the full party of six of us began the easy climb up Tal y Fan.

We followed the well defined path up the gradual hill and over a couple more stiles, the second being over barbed wire at the ridge and just to the west of the summit. From here, there was a little bit more climbing and zigzagging to do as we turned right up the steeper hill, but just two fairly straightforward sessions of this took us to the summit, trig point and stunning views out across the Irish Sea and Great Orme. I then set up the new production model SOTA Beam in conjunction with the Yaesu FT817 and enjoyed about an hour of radio work, making 9 unrushed contacts including several regular chasers. Maggie and Josh also ran up more than enough contacts to claim the activation, although after a while we did resort to all three sharing the same equipment due to problems of wiping each other out!

This was also of course my birthday party, and what a place to hold it. The bottle of champagne carried up in the rucksack was left to stand for a while when playing radio, in the hope it may be a little less lively by the time we popped the cork. No such luck, and Marianne received a traditional Formula One drenching, although mainly deflected by the new lightweight waterproof I had bought for her that morning. There was still enough for Marianne, Maggie, Josh and I to raise a glass to my 33 years, with Jimmy and Liam participating with their usual tipple of corporation pop.