BEN LEDI GM/SS-023

white sea below

SUNDAY 6TH NOVEMBER

Before leaving the home QTH i had to scrape the ice off the car for the first time this winter,overnight temperature fell to well below zero.Left home at 0730 for the one hour drive North to the Ben Ledi car park which lies aprx 5 miles North of Callander in Stirlingshire.The journey passed through some thick fog bands and were in clear sunshine and blue sky one minute,thick fog and very poor visibility the next.

This was to be my 3rd visit to this hill with my last trip back on 15/06/2008.Due to the popularity of this 2,884 foot hill i decided to arrive reasonably early as the parking spaces soon get taken up,especially on a Sunday and glad i did too,there were only about another 6 cars there before me unlike the return when about 50 cars lined the verges.

The path is fairly straight forward and initially leads off through the trees,after crossing a forestry road the views open up with plenty of neighbouring hills poking through the low-lying fog.Loch Lubnaig was completely buried beneath the sea of fog and time was taken at this point to get a photo in of the amazing scenes.

One hour and fifty-five minutes after leaving the car the trig point on Ledi was reached,greeted by strong N.W winds i was able to take shelter on

Looking West from summit.

the top Easter side of the summit well away from the frenzy of  newly arriving walkers.Lunch consisted of a flask of tomato soup with a couple of banana’s to keep my blood flowing.The 3 element sotabeam was then set up and vx2 attached for some sota action.

Ken & Christine (AXY/YMM) from Edinburgh and Steve (UAU) from Greenock were first in the logbook today,thanks for the sota spots to both! .Further contacts were made to Inverclyde with fellow sota’ists Bobby and Roddy (GAX&IOB) Falkirk regular Andy(USU) KGB in Irvine,PJD in Biggar,HMC-Linlithgow and best dx for the day goes to Tom (XHZ) near Arbroath.Summit to summit contacts for the day go to Adrian (TAI)who was over in the east today instead of his usual Inverness area on one of the Lomonds SS-154,Jack and Anne (COX & UXX) were also out on the Lomond hills this time on SS-198. Finally Robert (GUF) popped up on his old favourite haunt Tinto during a contest break.

Returned back the same route this time.Most of the fog had cleared around Ben Ledi although the central belt was still covered.The wallace monument at Stirling and the Grangemouth refinery chimney were clearly visible poking through the fog base to the S.E.   I was back home for 14:25 from the 36 mile trip back down the A81 road to Glasgow.

Thanks to all stations for the contacts.

view South East from Ben Ledi summit

Until the next time…..73

2M0GIL/P