As the new year dawned, fourteen POTA parks remained in my quest to complete every park within 20 miles of home. Of those, two stood out as a pair with a reasonable walk between: GB-0202/GFF-0100 Garston Wood and GB-0258/GFF-0124 Martin Down. My logging assistant wanted one last proper hike over the holidays, so the scene was set for yesterday, 3rd January.

We parked the car at Garston Wood around 1130 local time, and headed into the woods in search of some open space. Pretty much the whole of the site is heavily wooded, and there are signs encouraging visitors to stick to the paths, so we were hoping for at least a small break in the trees where we could reasonably set up.

After only a few minutes of following the westward path into the woods, we took a turn to the north through an open gate, and came across this bonfire-slash-ritual-sacrifice circle.

A perfect spot for a quick activation. For this stage of the day’s adventure, we’d brought the usual “heavyweight” QRO + restricted space equipment combination of the Yaesu FT-891, 20Ah Eco-Worthy LiFePo4 battery, and JPC-12 vertical.

We set those up, found ourselves a free spot on the 20m band, and as usual, put out “Is this frequency in use please, this is M0TRT”.

What happened next has immediately become one of my most memorable QSOs, definitely the most memorable of those that took less than a minute. I immediately got back “Foxtrot Five Papa Yankee India”.

Larry F5PYI is the POTA rep for France, almost certainly my top hunter at this point, and likely well known by most of Europe’s activators. I assumed he was on his own activation, or otherwise using the frequency, and fired back “Thanks Larry, I will QSY”.

But nope—it turns out he just had the radio on that frequency and happened to be listening right at the point I decided to call for the first time. So we made the QSO, and he graciously left the frequency to me so we could continue our activation.

Well that was a new one for me. First time keying up the mic that day, and immediately got a contact just off the back of “is this frequency in use”!

In short order we blitzed through another 22 QSOs on the 20m band, including three transatlantic, with W1OW and N2IGW in the log again along with a first QSO with POTA hunter VA1SEA. I am still blown away by what can be achieved with 100 Watts into a small metal pole surrounded by trees on all sides.

With a long walk ahead of us, I didn’t want to hang around too long at Garston Wood, so after a while we self-spotted “QRT”, made our excuses on the air, and headed off.

Back at the car, we had a quick switch of bags, ditching the QRO kit for the second bag I’d prepared for the hike itself. This one contained what I now think of as a “medium-weight” kit: Xiegu X6100, USB power bank, 20/40 linked inverted-V dipole antenna, and Sotabeams pole. Also, crucially, the Thermos of tea, water bottle, and our lunch.

Leaving the car at Garston Wood, we crossed the road and around 50 metres to the north, followed the start of the public footpath east towards Martin Down.

Now, if what you want from your hike is to be asking “are you sure this is a public right of way” every five minutes, this is the place for you!

The route map embedded below is a suggested route along definite public right-of-way paths, cross-referenced with Dorset Explorer. It’s not exactly the route we took, for ~reasons~, but a couple of notes are below.

• A: The public footpaths at each end of this farm road don’t have any signs to indicate which way the public bit goes, and that this road is private. The farmer was very nice about it when he found us halfway down this shortcut, but if you’re following the route for yourself, now you know.
• B: This is marked as a public right of way on maps, but it’s unmarked in reality except by gaps in the hedges at each side. It’s a fully ploughed and planted hay field, and you can’t see one side from the other, so you just have to strike out across it and hope. We didn’t meet the farmer but anxiety levels were high!

At the eastern end of section “B”, the field is enclosed by an embankment, and once you climb the few metres to the top, you are rewarded with a view over the southern part of Martin Down. Compared to the rolling hills of Cranborne Chase to the south-east, Martin Down itself is somewhat less impressive and much more flat. However, there’s plenty of flat open space for antennas and anything else you might like to do here.

Since it was already gone 1330 local time, we decided not to explore Martin Down at this point, but to have our lunch on the nearest bit of flat ground. (Flat-ish, anyway. There must be a lot of moles here.) The temperature had risen to its daily high of 2°C by that point, and I’m sure the passing dog walkers were confused as to why we’d spread out a picnic blanket and were happily eating our lunch in freezing conditions.

Once lunch was done, we set up the radio and antenna and got making contacts, starting on 40m and then moving to 20m. With only 10W to play with, I had limited expectations for the 20m band, but we got out to Italy and Poland without trouble today.

Compared to the “accidental QRP” era where the FT-891 was set to 10W Tx power and we really struggled for contacts on 40m, getting nothing at all on 20m, my recent QRP experiences have been much better. Whether that’s been getting lucky with band conditions or just another year’s experience of portable operating, I’m not sure. Regardless, I’m now gaining confidence that I could embark on longer hikes with lighter kit like the X6100, FT-817 or QMX, and still manage to activate a park or two, without wanting the FT-891 on emergency standby.

Only one visitor to the station today; in the middle of working the 20m band we had a quick break to talk to a chap about our setup and his past using HF maritime radio while crossing the Atlantic.

We put 10 in the log on each band, including regular John M6EAM and Fedi mutual Tobias DC1TC, before we decided that with the time approaching 1430 and an 80 minute hike ahead of us, we should pack down and race the sunset back to our car.

We took a slightly longer route home, heading north through Martin Down, through a field of sheep, and back to the road. The section of walk along the 60mph A354 isn’t ideal, but at least visibility is good around corners and there is a wide grass verge on the west side of the road to step out of the way of oncoming cars. I wouldn’t recommend it at night though.

We hiked back across the fields as the sun inched its way towards the horizon, and in the end made it back to Garston Wood car park, not quite before sunset, but at least while there was still some light in the sky.

All in all, a successful hike and a successful day of activations. We made 43 contacts in total, 10 on 40m and 33 on 20m, two of which were park-to-park. The total distance walked was 6.5 miles, which for me was just over 15000 steps, so hopefully we are starting to burn off some of the Christmas excess!

Thanks to all our contacts during today’s activations. See you on the air next time!