It’s another weekend, and time for another Parks on the Air adventure. Not just any weekend in fact—it’s POTA’s Summer “Support your Parks” weekend, so there’s even a certificate in it for this one. Well, a downloadable PDF of a certificate, but still. It’s also part of the Worked all OARC 2024 calendar.

So off we went to another local landmark. This time, it’s the turn of our most famous limestone sea stacks and possible home of the devil, Old Harry Rocks!

Old Harry Rocks, viewed from south side clifftop

I guess we really do live in a nice part of the world, don’t we?

Old Harry Rocks doesn’t qualify as a POTA park by itself, but it is at the far eastern end of two rather extensive ones: GB-0133 Isle of Portland to Studland Cliffs Conservation Area and GB-0008 Dorset National Landscape. The coast here feels like a rather cheeky activation—the former park is something like 20 miles of coastline, while the latter covers a good portion of the county! But nevertheless, it counts, and it’s a lovely place to spend an afternoon.

The clifftop is an easy one-mile hike up from the Bankes Arms, making it attractive enough for the whole family to come along with us this time—so thanks to them for putting up with an hour of our radio nonsense at the top! It’s also attractive enough for hordes of holidaymakers, so if you’re heading to Old Harry yourself on a nice sunny day, expect a lot of company.

We caught the chain ferry over to save ourselves the drive around, but only made it to fourth-from-front by the time it pulled away, leaving us with a 20 minute wait for it to come back. Combined with departing slightly later than planned, we ended up at the pub around 1230 local time, so it was lunch first, hike second. Four very full stomachs later, we headed up the trail to the clifftop.

The edge of the cliff features all the grockles’ favourite photo opportunities, while further back there is a wide area of grassland that had been recently mowed, leaving ample space for football games and even amateur radio. With panoramic views across Poole, Bournemouth, Christchurch and the western Isle of Wight, there would have been plenty of opportunities for some calls on the 2m and 70cm bands, but though I brought the HT, we didn’t have time for it in the end.

As usual we stuck to our old reliable 40m, and although the band was quite noisy today and we struggled to hear some of our hunters, we made it to 11 QSOs in around an hour.

After that, in deference to the rest of the family, we packed up, hiked back to the pub, had another drink, and chose to skip the ferry and drive the long way round back home. We hit exactly the sort of Corfe Castle traffic you would imagine on a sunny summer Sunday afternoon. Price you pay for living in a place like this, I suppose.

Thanks to all our contacts today:

UTC	Freq	Call	Rpt Tx	Rpt Rx	Name
1319	7.157	GM5DAV	23	51	David
1322	7.157	DJ5NF	13	57	Martin
1327	7.157	PD3RL	48	55	Alex
1344	7.170	GS4AAF	57	57	Dundee Amateur Radio Club
1356	7.142	F4ISZ	27	42	Franck
1358	7.142	G8HXE	37	44	Keith
1400	7.142	2E0MKH	57	44	Mike
1402	7.142	G0RQL	47	47	Tom
1403	7.142	G7HLB	47	54	Alastair
1407	7.158	DH4PSG	35	55	Peter
1413	7.158	M0JTL	47	55	Ian

Until next time, see you on the air!