Just an old Crock

The weather forecast was not too bad, showers, maybe, and later on possible barbecue weather.  So, it had to be a hill we could get up and down quickly and get back for fried aubergine and pork souvlaki (marinating in the fridge in lemon, thyme and olive oil since friday night).

The Crock is one of the first SOTA summits I did,  then, as a double with Hare Cairn, that stupidity has since been knocked out of me.  I'm a one hill man now.

GM/ES-056, WAB NO26 (again) is the target, starting from Freuchies, past loch Shandra, Tulloch (where I would love to live!) and then up the hill and around to the summit.  Only 12km walking and 200m ascent, a nice ramble.

The start of the walk is a nice easy track,

But as you start getting into open moorland you start to notice the start of the purpleness of the heather, and I'm afraid that the next sequence will just descend into an orgy of purple heather!

Having already seen a golden eagle ( a very regular, if not obligatory) sight in this region, we saw one of the local Herons setting up for a landing on the Loch.

Although there had been a lot of clearing compared to the map we did have to enter the forest for part of the walk, earily quiet.

But soon enough we were out again and climbing steadily

And then suddenly, (well, to be honest, after a certain amount of huffing and puffing) we were there!

And the aerial was erected!

And I settled down to the huge pileup of stations...

Not.

But, it was a pretty enough place to sit, eat a roast beef and mustard sandwich and drink half a bottle of Shepherd Neame Spitfire.

And it wasn't so bad.  First of all, despite just being the other side of NO26 (10km square), we have a mobile and data signal here, so can do the dirty dead and self spot and announce on the chat.  A self spot got 40m off to a busy start, mainly with Europeans as far east as OK1DVM, and north to LA5WNA.  Alan, gw4vpx was the first UK station followed by a run of regular WAB and SOTA chasers; g4afi, Don g0rql, Pedro ea2ckx (how does he hear me!), pa0b, eb2ju, Dave g4iar and Karl m3feh (always a good signal from Cornwall) and then 2 S2S with ec2ag/p on ea1/lr047 and hb9/pa2fyg/p on hb/zh005.    After a  transfer to 20m, Marius sp9amh was first in and then rw3xz in Russia and eu2mm in Belarus and then the big surprise, Ian, gi0azb short skip to Northern Ireland.  dd4ve, dl2dxa and then ct1bqh finished off 20m.  As I'd carried the hb9cv all the way up I felt duty bound to try 2m but only found SOTA activator Gavin gm0gav for a nice chat to Errol down the road.  15 countries in 21 qsos so it was pretty good considering the wailing and gnashing of teeth by some.  Equipment was, as usual, an ft817, 4watts to a dipole on a telescopic pole.

Getting a bit chilly, and barbecue calling so time to go!

We found a sort of path into the forest that wasn't on the map so thought ourselves lucky

What we should have done is then put up with the extra distance and followed the track on the map even though it would have initially meant going a bit further the wrong way rather than trying to go cross country

Still, nobody died, and we made it away before any weather arrived