Bredon Hill Hike - G/CE-003 SOTA (2020)

Summits on the Air Activation Report

Activation Date: Friday 22nd May, 2020.
Activator(s): Richard M1HAX.
Summit: Bredon Hill, Central England, England.
Summit ID: SOTA reference G/CE-003 (1 point).
Summit Height: 299m elevation, 257m prominence.
Summit Location: Lat./Long. 52.06073, -2.06324. Maidenhead Grid IO82xb.
Distance: 4.6km travelled with 143m of ascent.
Difficulty: SAC Grade T1.^(?)
Elapsed Time: 1hr 55m (including operating).
Weather: Feels like 17.8°C, 33 kph SW wind, 46% humidity.
Radio Equipment: Yaesu FTM100D, MFJ-1714, Zippy 4200mAh 4S LiFePo4.
Callsign Used: M1HAX/P.
Contacts: 22 (2m FM).

Trip Notes

Bredon Hill is a hill in Worcestershire, England, located about 6 miles south-west of the city of Evesham. It is part of the Cotswolds range and rises to a height of 981 feet above sea level. Bredon Hill is known for its stunning views and diverse range of habitats, including ancient woodland, limestone grassland, and hedgerows. The hill is also home to a number of archaeological sites, including Iron Age hill forts, Bronze Age burial mounds, and Roman roads. Bredon Hill has been the subject of several poems, including “Bredon Hill” by A.E. Housman, which celebrates the beauty of the hill and the memories it holds for the speaker.

This hill can be tackled from several sides with a variety of footpaths crossing over it. For this Summits on the Air activation, I started the walk by parking at the end of a narrow lane leading out of Kemerton village to the south of the hill.

The parking at the end of this lane is quite limited with only space for about three cars. It is popular with local walkers, so getting a space can be challenging.

I followed an obviously well-worn footpath north towards the summit. After a short wal up I headed west at a path junction, across a sign-posted permissive path towards the summit.

The summit has a hill fort structure and some sort of transmitter station (although I have never experienced any QRM at this hill). A large grassy top lends itself well to dipole mast deployments. On a clear day there are fantastic views of the countryside, including of G/WB-009 Worcestershire Beacon which I had completed earlier in the day.

Enjoying the fine weather, I stayed on the summit for about an hour, making quite a few radio contacts on 145MHz.

Whilst this is an easy one-point hill for the SOTA scheme, it is a very enjoyable bit of quintessentially English countryside, which is well worth a visit. Another popular route to the summit is from the north side where there is more parking opportunity at Woollas Hill.

Photos

Below are some photographs taken during my activation of Bredon Hill on Friday 22nd May, 2020.

Walking Route for Bredon Hill

The interactive map below shows my GPS track taken to the SOTA activation zone for Bredon Hill. The G/CE-003 summit area is marked on the map with a blue pin icon.

You can download the route shown above as a GPX file suitable for use with most GPS devices. This file is provided for information only, to support your own walk planning and research (it may contain navigation errors, detours and/or safety hazards). The route downloads provided here are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

Station Log

I logged the following 22 amateur radio contacts operating as M1HAX/P from G/CE-003 Bredon Hill on Friday 22nd May, 2020 (all times shown are UTC):

In the notes field I will usually log the other operator’s name and the signal report they provided. In accordance with the Summits on the Air rules, I do not make a log entry where a complete exchange of callsigns and signal reports was unsuccessful.

Additional Information

The following resources may be helpful to walkers, mountaineers and SOTA activators interested in Bredon Hill:

• Sotl.as Summit Page for G/CE-003 Bredon Hill.
• Hill Bagging UK Summit Page for Bredon Hill.
• Google Earth view of Bredon Hill.
• Wikipedia entry for Bredon Hill.

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