Coiliochbhar Hill
Sheltered station in the trees
This is the last day of school before the Christmas holidays and I wanted to try and fit in two 5 (with winter bonus) point summits. My spreadsheet timetable suggested there wasn’t quite enough time to fit in both, but I knew I could jog down the hills to save time and I didn’t typically use all the 45 minutes I allocated to being on the radio. First up was Coiliochbhar. There’s the route I took from the west and also another from the south. My route follows a land rover track much of the way up until you get to a big gate. This is where the estate owner is trying to encourage pheasants for shooting, and makes you take a detour around it. The path around isn’t very well developed, so a bit of heather bashing at times.
You turn off the track and head up to the summit on the final ascent.
At the top, there’s a cairn to your left and a fence line that leads into some trees. After a look at the cairn, I got the HT out and tried 2m. It was nice to get the WhatsApp group on 2m as I walked towards the trees. It was only three so I had to setup on HF, but that was fine. I setup in the trees, offering shelter from the wind but also making for easy mast support, and setup for 40m.
I had a summit to summit with a German ham, and a nice run on 40m. It did start to rain, so I packed up and headed down. On the way I met a game keeper, who asked if I could avoid visiting outside of Feb-Aug due to the pheasants. I guess I’ll leave it until Feburary before I come back again - and perhaps take the southern route too to avoid the pheasant breeding area. It was a short 10 minute drive up to the main road ready for the next one!