Umm…  second attempt to qualify this summit (First was sort of curtailed a couple of weeks ago when a load of horses decided to take a liking to my antenna…  I now know why the collective noun for horses is a ‘Harras’ 😉  Suffice to say I only managed one QSO that night!

Anyway, after fighting through what seemed busier than normal Bristol, I pulled into the car park at ST489581 with about another 5 cars, most of which seemed to have bike racks on, and was ready to go at about 18:50 GMT.

I followed the route I did last time, up across the road and up the path at the side of Ellick House, through the gate and taking the well defined way up SW towards the summit (ish)

Up the path, straight into the sun!

Up the top of this section, the path takes a little swing to the south and up towards the Trig Point.

It appeared that there had been quite a bit of drainage work done at this point, and quite a lot of small rocks placed along the track, no doubt to see how many mountain bikers they could dislodge from their seats!

There also appeared to be 2 trailers full of rubbish parked here for some unknown reason 🙁

Just before I reached the Trig Point, about 25 minutes after setting off, I disappeared into the heather and gorse to find a small hollow beside a small tree, hoping to avoid any further horse related incidents.

I had my fishing pole fastened to a small tree, and the sota beam in the air. I had a quick check on sotawatch, but couldn’t see any potential S2S activity, so I spotted myself and gave out a CQ

It all seemed pretty dead, I could hear a few fairly distant, mainly mobile, stations, but couldn’t work them, and eventually ended up with martin, M0HCT, from Nailsea.. Very spooky!  Only one letter out from my callsign!

Rubbish pic of the trig point in the gathering gloom!

Quickly followed by Paul, M0PRJ, from Kingswood, and a few others, including Keith, G6LLX/P who was on May Hill G/WB-019, but not doing any SOTA activation, Since I have no idea if he was within the activation zone, I can’t really claim it as a S2S.

Finishing off with M6KBC in Bath as the sun went down, with 6 QSOs, all on 2M FM, that was it.. I packed up and had a wander up to the trig point. Just to say I’d been there (again!) before making my way back down, being almost dark by the time I got back to the car.

So, second time lucky for this one.

Many thanks to the following: