Freeholds Top, G/SP-011 - 454m ASL - SD 906 218 - OS Explorer OL21 - 1 SOTA point       

M1EYP and M3EYP's Farewell Tour of summits came to the Rossendale pair of Freeholds Top G/SP-011 and Hail Storm Hill G/SP-009.  We have agreed to concentrate on uniques once Jimmy has done all the ones that I have done.    This will take a long time, but it does mean that most of our summit destinations are our last visits for the time being.  (Gun, Cloud and Shining Tor are exempt from this as we OWN those hills).

I awoke on the morning of Friday 21st April 2006, bright and early at 8.12am BST - AARGH!  Two hours late, and Marianne was in, not at work - AARGH!  All things considered, we did well do be on the road just after 9am, but this was a full 2 hours behind schedule.  Our summit times for the rest of the day were also about two hours later than the SOTAwatch Alerts times I posted.  We even got home two hours later than normal!

After a breakfast at Little Chef, we were heading northwards and as we entered the Rossendale Valley heard Myke G6DDQ and Mike G4BLH in QSO.  They were talking about me.  Myke was parked up near the start of a route up Freeholds Top, and was wondering where I was, what route I had taken etc.  I tried in vain to break into the QSO, but failed to wedge any sort of gap between the end of one over and the beginning of the next.  The next thing, there was Gwendolyn and Myke by the lay-by on the Bacup to Todmorden road, one of the start points for Freeholds Top.  At least he had guessed correctly about my route choice.  Myke was here to handover the commemorative mugs for the SP Fun Day on Sunday, and stunning they were too.    Beautiful colour design of mountain background, SOTA logo, and individual name, callsign, summit name and summit reference.  We were very impressed. This couldn't be topped, but Myke came close by handing us a paper bag containing a custard pie each.  These were gratefully scoffed, and we commenced our ascent of the hill.

Although we carried the FT-817 and SOTA Beam, we didn't use them, opting instead to put our new handhelds to further use.  This was quite a challenge from this hill which has very limited take-off, but we got the four contacts each and were on our way.  We had started out from Macclesfield in awful heavy rain, but kept faith with the Met-Office website weather forecast, and sure enough, we remained dry all day.  Furthermore, our descent from Freeholds was in bright sunshine, that was to remain with us all day - thanks Keith!  The sunshine called for us to take a 10 minute break in the descent to sample the undisputed delights of broccoli and stilton soup.

Thanks to the following stations, worked on 2m FM with 2.5 watts: