After an active Saturday, the last thing I could face was an inactive Sunday.
"Why don't I pop up to St Cyrus and do another of those WWFF things, and while I'm at it pop up the SOTA that was almost next to it?
So the plan was born to go and activate WWFF GMFF-060 , St Cyrus National Nature Reserve, and on the way back go up Hill of Garvock SOTA GM/ES-085 with Trig point TP 4135, both in WAB NO76, in the county of Aberdeenshire.
Starting from the car park at the lower left there was a nice walk to be had through the dunes and round the whole bay before back tracking to climb up the steep path up the cliffs by Woodston.
Sadly it seems Ian has "a life" and wasn't available to come along to carry "the heavy thing" ( the 7AH SLAB he usually gets landed with), so I had to manage the whole damn lot myself. I don't want to get used to this!
Once up at the top the views are worth having
and I found a nice seat to get setup on
at 1405Z I had the station setup and ready to go, 5 minutes later than I had announced on the forum. Immediately DK4RM came back "I've been waiting here for you".. Nice! Just a few minutes later my SOTA friend, Manuel, EA2DT called in and then the dam burst. I made a little under 120 QSOs in the net 120 minutes, in 25 different DXCC with many astonishing signal reports. My little 4 watts was a 59+ signal from Switzerland to Spain to Slovenia and Croatia, and Greece, round through Russia to Finland. It seems to work well round Europe from there.
After 2 hours I was beginning to get a little hoarse and ready to have a break as the sun headed lower
So time to stretch my legs again and head back to the car you can probably see a bit nearer than the river!
On the way I had a look at the ancient graveyard which dates from 880AD!
And a visit to an NNR wouldn't be complete without a view of the Flora and Fauna, I forgot to take a photo of the huge patch of bluebells which gave one part under the cliffs a complete blue caste, but here's a few of them
And it's hard to see the thousands of birds in this still photo:
but look for the small black dots around the rock.
Anyway, back at the car, I headed just 5km inland to climb steeply up the north flank of Hill of Garvock. A Walk Highland reviewer, http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/Forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=3632 described an easy route up. At the start there was a sign which warned walkers that from April to November "Beasts" would be in the fields who might become aggressive because of their young..... Nahh, no problem, so I set off. It turned out that the "Beasts" were mixed Cows, Calfs and Bulls. Some of whom had not heard of the Scottish "Right to Roam"
"GET OFF MY LAND"
So I "legged it", and decided I didn't really fancy that route anyway, THIS was a much better way up
albeit being rather up and down and boggy and so on.....
Eventually I made it to the monument (an 18th century folly)
Where TP4135 made a useful aerial support
Views from here are quite stunning, looking South over Montrose and out to sea towards England
And then round to the North West where the real hills start (and don't stop for a couple of hundred miles!!)
So, the whole point of coming here was the Radio (who am I kidding!!).... It seemed rather hard going, I made a few on 40m around the UK, with some very strong signals on 40m. Then tried 20m and wondered if I was going to get anyone! I made KA1R in Mass' again, and EA2DT, Manuel, no hill is now complete without! OM1AX and OK2PDT were good signals as usual. And I had a nice chat with Peter and Sylvia, OE5YYN and AUL. After that it was definitely time to head down, even though it's May the temperature started dropping like a stone, they're still talking of "frost" in the glens! It was nearly 2100 by the time I got back to the car, time to go home!
An enjoyable afternoon out bringing together two of the nicest ways of doing radio, I can't believe it took me so long to discover them!
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