I originally planned to activate The Cloud on Saturday morning and then head off to the Peak Wildlife Park – however, plans quickly changed when I made contact with MW7MWZ who explained that Gun (G/SP-013) was practically around the corner and “about a 3 minute hike from the parking spot.” So unusually for me, here’s a double activation report!
I’ve seen a few people mention that you can park on Tunstall road (SJ 896 628) for The Cloud, and certainly when we were there, there were several cars parked on the road here. However, I parked just around the corner in Timbersbrook Car Park. The hike from the car park to the summit is only about 2 kilometers and has a climb of about 185 meters. The only thing to watch out for is that a couple of the tracks (like “Cloud Downhill”) which are mountain bike trails; these are well sign posted if you keep a lookout.
We hiked this summit on a fairly bright Saturday morning, getting to the top at about 11:15 – so it was a busy summit; but thankfully there’s plenty of space to operate from. I sat on the edge for a couple of photos but then backed away for the actual activation, worried that I’d drop my logbook or TX-500 off the edge if I wasn’t careful!
This was another easy activation as I picked up 4 QSOs in about 10 minutes; thanks again to M0CQE who was my first contact on this summit and who has chased me on a good handful of summits in this area this year!
However, the real hero of the activation was M3TMX. I heard a station come back to my call with an unworkable signal, I barely caught “M3” but then it went quiet. I waited a few minutes and didn’t hear anything further so began to pack up, just in time to hear M3TMX/P who it seems had ran the last part of the climb to the top of Shining Tor! He genuinely caught me just in time before I closed down – and we all love a summit to summit call!
I grabbed 5 total QSOs from the top of The Cloud and whilst descending tried to alert to a newly planned ascent up Gun! I hadn’t really looked at the potential for activating Gun, but since MW7MWZ mentioned that it was so close, and with a very short hike in, I figured it would be worth a quick detour.
We parked for Gun at SJ 967 609 which is close to what Google Maps calls the “Rolling Hills Viewpoint”. There’s parking here for about 5 cars, but when we arrived we were the only car there. We braced ourselves for the hike to the summit…all 700 meters of it. It’s a short climb of about 28 vertical meters, so relatively accessible for those that want to try a summit without jumping in at the deep end. From this summit, I grabbed 4 quick QSOs to complete the activation and then packed up.
