Wales & Borders - October 2013 Trip - Day Three: 1. Burrow WB-014

Our route off the summit of Burrow back to Hopesay

Friday October 25th 2013

We planned four activations on Day Three of my October 2013 visit to stay with my fell walking pal Geoff M6PYG / 2E0NON in Malvern. The two and a half days were spent driving around and tramping the hills in an area stretching from Abergavenny up to Church Stretton. I needed to bag my last few Welsh Border Marilyns and today I would finish them and hopefully make plenty of SOTA contacts whilst doing it. 

We left Cradley near Malvern with Geoff driving for an hour or so north over the Ridgeway, to Bromyard, Leominster and Ludlow. We left the A49 before we reached Craven Arms to park in Hopesay - our start point for a walk up the Shropshire Way to the summit of Burrow. 

Our chosen route was not the best and we found a much better route down when we discovered a notice stating that the landowner had signed up to an environmental scheme allowing the public to use some of his fields that were not public rights of way.  Walking across this land (picked out on the map above) allowed easier access to the summit of Burrow.  The best way to the highest point is to follow the Shropshire Way to the field corner at SO 3825 8364.  Turn left here and head for the woodland ahead of you. At SO 3821 8337 enter the wood through a gate and turn left to follow the track up to the summit, turning right at SO 3838 8314. The gamekeeper was out feeding the hundreds of pheasants being raised here, and like most gamekeepers from my experience, he wasn't over-friendly shall we say, when he spoke to us briefly.

M6PYG operating on 2m FM in the early morning autumn sunshine on Burrow G/WB-014

The take off from the summit was excellent and we really liked Burrow, this was well managed land and a most pleasant place to be. We were on the air at 0845z working Andy G8MIA in Rugeley, Staffordshire. As on previous days our best DX contact on 2m FM was with the well equipped station of Don G0RQL near Holsworthy, Devon - a distance of 197 Km or 123 miles. We were pleased with the performance of our portable station - a recent use purchase of a Yaesu FT-1500M.  We used 30 watts from a 3 cell LiPO cell. The aerial was a vertical dipole. We made just six contacts before we left to head into Wales to determine if we could hear Don from from the more distant summit of GW/MW-031 Caeliber Isaf.