Working Weymouth and Walking..

Last minute idea as I woke up this morning, said to the GL, lets go up on Dartmoor and do a walk, only proviso is that I get to do some radio, I was greeted with a somewhat mute reaction, as she loves walking, but does not share my love of the radio.

All did not go to plan as I could not find the keys to my 'truck' a trusty old over-tyred jacked up Vitara mobile radio shack, so also missing was the key to my other car and the house key, not good.

As I have not used either vehicle since Thursday I could not remember where I had put them, anyway after turning the house upside-down as you do, they were found in my electronics tool box in the radio room...??

So were off, stop off at the local supermarket for lunch nibbles and we are up on Haytor (457 m, 1,499 ft ASL) by around 1300.

We have several books of walks published by Bossiney Books (http://www.bossineybooks.com/) who make a lot of local walk books for Devon and Cornwall.

The walk we did today takes in Haytor Rocks, but better still the disused Haytor granite quarry, which supplied granite for many of London's buildings including the 1832 London Bridge.

There are distinctive tracks with granite kerbs around the quarry, this was part of the Haytor granite tramway built in 1820.

Here you can clearly see the old track.

Here you can see a hole in the granite - this was the hinge for the moving part of the points.

This is a 'tourist' pose of me and the Icom IC-E7 which brings me nicely to my first contact on 2m simplex to a G7 (did not have pen/paper) in Weymouth.

Shortly after a mobile on dartmoor and finally a G0, Colin in Exmouth, this was on the Torbay repeater, which I accessed easily even behind and down from Haytor.

Overall a really good afternoon, which nearly never happened, thanks to my bucket-brain.