Glen Quharity to Corwharn

Summer still seems to be avoiding Scotland, but looking at the synoptic chart I had a theory that if we stayed sufficiently East we might be OK.  Still, I packed my full waterproofs and the shelter in my rucksack...

Todays walk would start at Westerton, just a couple of km West of where we started last week.  This time up Glen Quharity and up to Cairn Gorse, thence Corwharn, or in SOTA terms GM/ES-048,  wab NO26.  Eagle eyed readers (do I have any?  Readers that is :-) ) will spot last weeks walk to Cat Law just to the East,  there is a bonus point for the really smart ones who spot the other SOTA summit on the map.

We got to the road junction just by the road to Westerton and sat in the car, wondering if we should just drive on...  It wasn't very very heavy rain, just the type that makes you very very wet.  The car reckoned it was 12.5C...

But, it stopped.  We were here, lets take a punt on it.  Still a bit grey, but the views the started to open up were promising of a pleasant walk

Shortly up the Glen I found this discarded sheep feed box, I  was really quite curious in what way it would maximise the performance of the sheep...

The views up the Glen became increasingly pleasant (despite the continued threatening weather)

We seem to be in peak purple heather season which gives a terrific caste to every aspect

Looking East there are great views of last weeks walk, Cat Law

We began to be glad we weren't any further west as we seemed to be getting significantly better weather than one Glen removed.

And eventually the final climb to the summit came into view

We still weren't sure of the weather to the west!
















The summit has a rather intriguing cairn just below the top, this is looking East down Glen Uig

But we chose to hunker down out of the rather keen wind a bit uphill from it behind a convenient peat hag.

The one problem with the nice sheltered spot was that we had absolutely zero mobile phone signal for self spotting and even a wander around the summit yielded nothing ( despite looking to the contrary I'm waving around a mobile phone looking for a signal).  (Oddly when I went back up to the plateau later I did get a fine signal - shades of Cat Law which admittedly is next east).

So,  how did the radio go?  Tricky.   Again we had no chance of spotting, but as I was again appearing on frequency at exactly the time I said, there would be at least someone listening out?  It didn't seem that way, but I did eventually get replies after several minutes of CQing.  And to kick off with an S2S with gw0peb/p on gw/nw-067, followed by good signals from g4zrp, g0vbe/p, g0veo and 2e0lma/p, 5 40m qsos and so a qualified summit.  Things dried up completely and so 30 minutes (and two mini pork pies and half of a bottle of Ossian) later I tried 14285 on 20m.  Again I was lucky with two cold callers, both s2s,  oe1ajw/p oe/st360 and dl/m0wml/p dl/bg023 plus regular hb9agh.  And then nothing.  As the IOTA conference had started 20m became unbearable so a qsy back to 40m via a trip to the plateau which yielded a mobile signal and an alert on the WAB chat yielded a huge signal from Esther gi0aza.   Esther spotted me on sotawatch so we became a little busier with some SOTA regulars and others including gw4vpx, g0rql, ei2ii, pe1pic, on5swa, ok1dvm, m3feh and m0hem.

After things quietened down again the weather deteriorated a little,  and had to retreat into full waterproofs.   It became very clear that the very nice sheltered spot was very very much more pleasant the putting your head up over the parapet.

Time for a quick pose next to the Cairn and then leg it

Despite the nice views and promising weather looking East down Glen Uig

It became very clear that there was some serious stuff coming in on the brisk wind over Mount Blair to the East!

And in fact the wind was so strong we decided to abandon the idea of going along the tops to Craig of Balloch and opted for the quick way down and the more sheltered route along the Glen floor.  We were hit with the worst rain shower of the trip going down and were grateful that we were relatively sheltered!

Nice views though of the hills rising suddenly up out of the Glen Uig valley floor.

All in all a nice walk

Let me out, I've got cabin fever!!

It had rained all Saturday and half of Sunday.   But keenly following the rain radar it really looked like it was passing over.  This time from East to West, so would it be possible to get out???

Not far away, (40 minutes drive) just north west of Kirriemuir lies a nice patch of hills between Glens Uig, Prosen and Quharity,  Cat Law is easily accessible starting from Auldallan and has a track pretty much to the top.  In radio terms it's GM/ES-044, WAB NO36, Trig TP2045, in sanity terms it was a lifesaver after a weekend of rain.

The weather looked promising as we started up, looking east.

You'd think the old man had been cooped up for a year though

But we got to the top

and fixed the mast to the trig,

the wind was a bit stronger up there and I regretted not untangling the dipole first

Eventually I caught the bit of wire and managed to get a radio station going

And then it got difficult! Mobile signal on here for self spotting is weird, one minute it's there, one minute it isn't.   We could hear a WAB net going on 80m but couldn't get heard with 4watts.  The equipment is just an ft817,  7AH SLAB and a link dipole.  I tried calling on 40m on the frequency that I'd alerted beforehand that we would use but no-one was listening for us - I am increasingly convinced that the art of "looking for someone on the radio" is gone,  many people now just sit looking on the internet for spots and jumping to that frequency.  No spot - no jump.  Heaven knows, in the rain of Sunday morning I'd tried that myself from home (I'm seldom on the radio from home preferring to be on a hill), how easy it was, like painting by numbers, except I'd done it on cw (morse) just for a bit of variety and because I'd done no morse for weeks!, catching Andy F/HB9JOE/p in the Vosges and a few others.

Anyway, eventually I did manage to make it known I was there and got a few in the log.  Radio conditions were very difficult following a big solar event and we only managed 5 qsos on 40m.   Then we managed to find out that the Northern Irish contingent were qrv on 80m and out again came my new secret weapon for the second time.

The loading coils fits in at the jumper for 20/40m and gives a very good match over a narrow part of 80m.  And again I was amazed when Esther gi0aza/p (and Ian azb) on gi/mm-012 came straight back to my call.

After that we had a brief go on 20m but after 3 qsos, sp9amh, oe7fmh, and dj2mx it was clear we were getting nowhere and with clearly incoming weather decided enough was enough.

The wind was getting quite strong up there:



And looking East things were starting to look grim so we made a quick pack and fled.   At least my water bottle didn't freeze as it had on my first visit to this hill, albeit a little later in the year!

As we headed down the hill, looking west the views were pretty stunning, in this shot you can see GM/ES-35, 43, 56, 58, 63 and 64, plus?!

We were hoping for a lamb barbecue on return, but Ian couldn't run fast enough

thankfully the chops were in the fridge already.