Friday 3rd January 2014 started with another lovely cooked breakfast and pot of tea at the Butchers Arms, Carhampton. The day of respite from the weather was over, and the big storm and flooding was now due. As much as I would have like to have consider the more local and convenient summits like Periton Hill G/SC-006, Wills Neck G/SC-002 and Beacon Batch G/SC-003, the heavy rain was hitting the area hard as promised by the Met Office.

       

I reckoned I could dodge the storms by driving out East to Walbury Hill G/SE-001 then switching back up to Cleeve Hill G/CE-001. This did mean a heck of a lot of driving, but Liam loves a long drive, so that wasn't a major problem. Our route used the M5 and M4 before heading down through Hungerford. A combination of guesswork and mapwork got me to the parking spot at SU379615.

       

My storm dodging strategy appeared to have worked and Walbury Hill was bathed in sunshine and blue sky. For my operating spot, I selected SU378616 just by the junction of the public footpath and public bridleway, and around 15m lower the the summit true. Where the car was parked was possibly just inside the AZ itself, at a height of around 273m or 24m lower than the summit!

It was just six QSOs on 12m, five on CW and one on SSB. Nothing else to report or mention, so next to Cleeve Hill G/CE-001 for the final summit of the excursion, and a sixth new multiplier in the 12m Challenge.