Judy and I took advantage of a business trip to Shropshire to activate SP-015 The Cloud in North Staffordshire, on the way back. Another hill on National Trust land that takes only 10 minutes to ascend. It lies 2 miles east of Congleton and is 343m high. There is limited parking on Cloudside at GR SJ 908634 where the path and steps take you to the top, past the NT sign seen above. The way to the top forms part of the The Staffordshire Way, a long distance path. We had poor visibility on the day and temperature at 3.00 p.m. was 1 degree. You can see from the summit that the drop to the north is sheer, hence the request for "No Hang Gliding". On a better day the view must be fantastic.

This was a straightforward but quite cold HF/2m activation. 39 QSOs was a record number of contacts from all activations I have done so far. It was also the greatest number of DXCC entities that I have contacted from a single hill. We spoke to radio amateurs from England, Scotland, Wales, Austria, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Russia and France:

After 50 minutes operation we decided to call it a day and head into Congleton for a hot drink. We were cold. Judy (XYL) had done a fantastic job logging callsigns and names down as I "balled" them out to her from the morse heard. This was much to the surprise of passers by. Despite it being at the end of a dull cold winter's day there were at least 10 walkers of all ages traversing the hill. On a good day it would be really busy!

39 QSOs with 10 DXCC Countries made this a very successful activation indeed, and was one more hill (after SP-005 Pendle), to cross off my Southern Pennines already activated list. I'm glad I had contacts with Ric, G3CWI in nearby Macclesfield. It was Ric who at Donnington Show in 2005, encouraged me to use HF CW when activating, so I bought a German Palm miniature paddle key after that and never looked back. SOTA is great fun, both from a Chaser's and from an Activator's point of view.