Seeing how the day was nice and sunny, I decided to get out and do a SOTA activation. Looking at the summits page on sotawatch, I decided on Wapley Hill, G/WB-016, in Herefordshire, which looked rather interesting, being the site of an iron Age Hill Fort.

Journey time from home was around an hour, even though I missed the turning off the B4362, and ended up having to turn back, courtesy of a roundabout on the outskirts of Presteigne! Being careful not to miss the turning again, I was soon in the car park, ready to go.

A fairly simple path using forest tracks soon had me close to the fort itself. A permissive path next to a rustic seat gave a nice short cut to the entrance.

Route up Wapley Hill

Rustic seat with permissive path to the right

End of the permissive path, the entrance

I stopped for a few moments to read the informative sign! (Click to read it!)

The informative board at the entrance

Looking around, once inside, I decided to set up on one of the mounds. In hindsight, which is a marvellous thing! this probably wasn’t a good move, as it appears that everyone (and his dog.. literally!) is intent on walking around on top of the mounds!  Still, I hope I didn’t cause too much trouble 🙂

Operating position, possibly not a good one!	Centre of the hill fort, probably better for HF

I primarily worked on 2M FM, although dropped down to 40M to gain a S2S near the end of the activation.. Perhaps the operating position wasn’t ideal, but the middle of the hill fort would have shielded 2M signals a little, maybe next time I’ll use the middle of the fort which has room for quite large HF antennas!

The following were all logged in a fairly laid back hour and a half:

All in all a very pleasant afternoon in the sun, even if one walker did think I was calling in air strikes from nearby Shobdon Airfield!