There are many things to criticise about the British. You might pick our endless complaining about the weather, our supermarket Meal Deal-based cuisine, or the centuries of brutal colonialism. But one thing that’s great about us is that when we give a village an awful name, we will doggedly stick to it for a thousand years.

The Shitterton village sign, Public Domain photo by Jameslox from Wikipedia. The previous sign was stolen so many times that they replaced it with this huge stone one.

The village is actually lovely. And nearby is GB-5103 May’s Woodland Reserve, a new POTA spot in my area.

May’s Wood is owned by badger-fancier and PhD astrophysicist Brian May (who may also once have been in some sort of band). The main wooded part of the site is currently closed off to protect deer, but the walk around it remains open, as does the open area of young trees and long grass to the south, which I eventually made my way around to.

At the top of a small incline, right in the centre of the plantation, sits a single bench with a commanding view over it and the rooftops of Shitterton and Bere Regis beyond.

If I were Brian May I’d definitely have sat here one sunny afternoon, just like today, and surveyed my kingdom. So who knows, maybe I have shared a bench with a rock legend.

The area around the bench afforded plenty of space for an inverted-V dipole, so I set up on the 40m band with the FT-891 and started calling CQ. Band conditions weren’t great, with some occasionally deep QSB, and everyone who I spoke to about the conditions agreed they were pretty terrible. Nevertheless, 20 minutes of operating netted me 14 QSOs, including fedi mutual and regular POTA activator F4LUB, bunker activator 2E0KHP, and a number of regular hunters.

This was only a quick activation after work, so once my 20 minutes was up, I packed down and headed back to the car. I followed the eastern route this time, which was much quicker but included a lovely winding path through the trees and a deep dark gully running back down the hill.

Many thanks to all my contacts this afternoon. See you on the air next time.

♫ Radio, some-one still loves you... ♪