Ladylea Hill
Don’t mention the shortcut
Another day off, and some more SOTA summits to activate! Today I wanted to knock off some 2-pointers with winter bonus that I’ve not climbed before. First on the list was Ladylea Hill. I did have some concerns when driving to Ladylea and droves of tweed men with hounds were scratching around with shotguns looking for turkeys or something. Luckily they were a couple of hills over and I wasn’t going to get shot.
It seems anything west of Morven was covered with snow and Ladylea was one of those. The main concern was parking, and not being able to get the car out once I returned to it. So I just parked on the verge pointing downhill, even though there is a nice off road parking area. The ascent is pretty quick and I was soon on the summit. There was no wind whatsoever and the wire didn’t even flinch on the mast. Whilst it was chilly it was very pleasant in the sun. The clouds were over the high peaks and it did gradually moved east during the day.
The top has a convenient post for securing a mast to. I decided just to do 40m and 2m today and both were active at an easy pace.
On the way down from Ladylea, a path leading straight down was too tempting as a shortcut - especially as I still had two more to go. I looked at the map and whilst the path didn’t return to the road, there was just a short stretch of forest to walk through, so I figured “why not”. It started well, making good progress down the hill, until I came to the forest, surrounded by fencing. I did spy a gap under it, which I had to literally crawl through!
That was only the start of my problems, as the forest was thick fallen trees, and I had to scramble over and under them to make any progress, but by this time I wasn’t going to go back up the hill now. So I pushed on.
Eventually I made it through and out onto the road, where I walked back to the car. Looking at my route and satellite imagery, I do wonder if it would’ve been better to walk further south and avoid the trees. Although at the time I don’t remember it looking clear.
Well on to the next one, Ben Newe!