SOTA GW/NW-057 Foel Cae'rberllan GW4OBK June 2021

After activating GW/NW-063 Ffrid Cocyn we went back along the B4405, turning left in the village of Abergynolwyn. A few miles down the country lanes took us to a small car park with toilets at Mary Jones Chapel, SH672088. At 14:20 we set out on a marked public footpath leading to a steep field and then on to open access land, marked as Llechwedd on the 25K OS map:

The view to Castell y Bere on our ascent

Once we left the bottom path the plan was to tack across the hillside to reach the farm track at 669079 when the climbing became a little easier, but overall this was a tough ascent for me. It took the best part of an hour to get to the easier track before we doubled back towards the summit on it. We left the track at 671080 to follow sheep path to the summit. This wasn't so bad - the hardest part on the ascent had been from Llechwedd to the track. We summited at 15:50 and stayed until 17:25. We sheltered below the very top of the hill on what was a pleasant afternoon. There was what appeared to be a derelict comms installation of some sort on the summit - to the right of the broken mast and antenna there was a ground mounted control box. I thought that to install that infrastructure with a mains supply the purpose for it must have been vital at one time, but not anymore. The nearest civilisation with a mains supply was around a mile away from the summit in the valley:

The defunct comms installation and control box on GW/NW-057 Foel Cae'rberllan

Looking towards the sea in the direction of Tywyn

Another summit - same novel to read while I did my thing with the KX3, 5m pole & dipole

Selfie of Judy XYL and Phil G(W)4OBK just before we departed the summit

Radio was successful on 2m with the handheld and whip but poor using my HF gear and I questioned the insurance policy of carrying all the necessary gear for just 7 QSOs on HF. There were many unanswered CQ calls and 4 spots thanks to the excellent RBN. However, and only God knows why, I worked NW7E Michael in Oregon, a real gem of a QSO! One wonders why no more?... There was no mobile coverage on either EE or Vodafone from the summit and that for me ruled out the pointless and frustrating exercise of calling CQ on phone. 2m FM with the little FT-65E and RH770 brought me four quick QSOs including Alan GW4VPX at good strength before moving on to the 60 metre band to work G0EVV and G0FVH:

We left the summit at 17:20 local time and it took almost a full hour to reach the car over a distance of 1.5 miles. After returning to our place at Farchnys near Barmouth (booked via Sykes Cottages) we had a quick shower and changed and headed to The Steakhouse in Dolgellau. The restaurant had the best range of starters I've seen in years. The rack of ribs was delicous which is what I had. Judy was dissapointed with the standard of sirloin steak though, although if we return to the area we would go again, just on the strength of the starters and ribs. Final summit in the week was next day, Friday on GW/MW-020 Esgair Ddu which completed the 40 summit MW area for me.