On Sunday 9th October we travelled into Co Tyrone to the southern side of the Sperrins. I had looked up all the various reports for this one and decided to follow M1EYP’s advice and followed the Sperrin Way. This was at best a lane but took us up to within 1k of the summit. We left the Landy beside a water storage ditch that was “grassed” over. This time we only had mountain dog – sofa dog was left at home – and she had the sense not to walk over it!! we climbed over the fence and headed up to the summit. It was a lovely afternoon, thankfully no midgies!

We quickly set up the HF aerials and then Ian went to 2m whilst I started on 40m then 20m. Mountain dog settled into her usual spot beside me with a few wee forays out into the heather. 34 qsos were gained in quick succession so well activated on HF!! Ian had 5 on 2m fm. One S2S with CT1HIX/P.

The views over to Sawel, Dart and the Mullaghs were amazing so after a few photos we started back down to the Landy. We kept going this time over to the Glenelly valley side and were soon in the Plum where we had our usual stop at Pinkerton’s shop for an ice cream and were able to log on at the BT phone box to do an upload to Facebook of the photos!

We thought we would add this one in at the end of our trip to the South West mountains along with Mullaghcroy 009. However as we couldn’t get access to the shorter walk to Dooish we ended up with just one summit today. When we were refused access on the west side of the summit we drove round to the east to the wee pub on the Drumquin road. We were given permission to park and he kindly directed us to the start of the “track”. After and hour we reached the folly and then on to the summit. Ian was soon in contact with Victor GI4ONL on 2m and I had a QSO with him also in case HF wasn’t good. I needn’t have worried – very quickly had it activated on 40m, then S2S on 60m and 20m. Views were nonexistent today as we were SN led with a fine mist. Mountain dog was getting cold at this stage so we packed up and headed down again. No wildlife spotted today. Just the usual mushrooms and fox pooh!!