Wales - November 2013 - Day One - Summit Four - Mynydd-y-Briw NW-060

Part of our route to NW-060 from NW-049. Some roads were farm tracks -  see text below

Our 20 minute drive from Gyrn Moelfre to a parking place for Mynydd-y-briw was rather puzzling, but presumably is quite normal in parts of Wales. When I see a C Class road marked on either a 1:25 or 1:50K map as yellow I assume it to be tarmac. Not so in Wales. These rural roads can turn out to be any surface!  At crossroads SJ 185274 where we hoped to turn left we saw a sign saying "Unsuitable for Motor Vehicles" so we avoided that lane and continued on, eventually turning left to pass the farm of Lloran-ganol to reach the T junction at SJ 181270 where we turned right. The roads were still unmetalled but improved as we neared the parking place at a gate for NW-060 - grid ref SJ 178260. A steep tarmac track heads uphill from here to the Arqiva Communication mast on the summit.  The walk up took just six minutes and it was dark. 

We operated at the fence around 100m north of the comms mast and suffered no problems with RF breakthrough into the front end of the Yaesu FT-1500M.

M6PYG (2E0NON from Jan 2014) operating in the dark on Mynydd-y-briw GW/NW-060

We made contact with 8 stations on 2m FM using 30 watts of power to the vertical dipole in less than 20 minutes. Leaving the summit we made our way back to the A5 roundabout at Welshpool for our usual KFC bucket of fast food. Geoff departed back home to Malvern whilst I drove north to Llangollen to spend a nights B&B at the economically priced Abbey Grange Hotel which is at the south end of the Horseshoe Pass, north of Llangollen. This hostelry was perfectly placed for my plans to activate five more summits in North Wales the next day.