Sunday 29th May 2005 - We reversed our earlier driving route, as far as the village of Llowes, about 2 miles before Clyro.  Here, we turned left and headed upwards, until the road levelled out and we had a National Trust sign for The Begwns.  I pulled the car onto some grass by the road.  It was all solid, nice and dry, something that we noticed throughout the trip, and a welcome respite from the bogs encountered in Northern Ireland and Yorkshire recently!  The summit was visible from the road, marked by a small wood.  This is marked on the map as "The Roundabout", and when we arrived, it was surrounded by a wide circular wall.  At the centre was a crescent of stone benches, and a most comfortable operating position.

A lift was on, and 2m SSB was as overcrowded as Hay-on-Wye itself with strong UK-wide and Spanish stations.  I initially thought that therefore I would get my contacts easily, but in fact I had little chance against the swarms of QRO stations.  Despite my concerns about this hill being possibly screened in most directions by bigger stuff, I made four contacts easily enough into the Midlands on 2m FM.  It was approaching 8pm, so I packed up and drove the lads back down to Talgarth, where we tried a pub called The Bell, which turned out to be a real treasure.  Home-cooked meals, big portions, loads of extra chips (proper chips).  Prices?  Some meals at £3.00, some at £3.50 and some at £4.00.  All prepared by the 64 year old lady proprietor of the establishment, and utterly delicious and filling.  We didn't return to Hay-on-Wye again.

Thanks to the following stations, all worked on 2m FM with 2.5 watts: