On a recent trip to London before the holidays, I set aside the sunniest forecast day to get away for a SOTA activation. I chose to go to Wendover Woods, as N8PEM reported it as a combined SOTA/POTA that can be reached from London by mass transit and walking. I booked a ticket with Chiltern Railways that operates the train line to Wendover (en route to Aylesbury). I got on at Marylebone, which is a short walk from the Baker Street Underground station, not far from where the literary detective Sherlock Holmes had his residence.

Trains on this line depart every 30 minutes and the ride was about 50 minutes to Wendover. I had booked my ticket in advance, but I could have gotten away with buying the ticket at the station. I was leaving the city just before 09:00 on a Friday morning, so I surely had missed any commuting rush. Only a handful of other riders were in my train car. The village just before Wendover, Great Missenden, was once the home of the writer Roald Dahl, and this looked like it would have been an interesting stop.

I walked through the town of Wendover along Tring Road, then headed east through a residential area to find Babington Road. Several access trails from this road lead into Wendover Woods. There is a large network of trails here for hiking and biking so there were many ways to go. It was about 2.25 miles altogether from the train station to a pair of vista points off of the one-way road.

Wendover Woods has a fairly large activation zone, so there are many potential operating points. The nature trails attract many hikers, dog walkers, and families, so I wanted a place I could deploy my 40m wire antenna without being in the way. I had scoped out an operating point at a pair of overlooks just inside the activation zone (around 51.77830, -0.71303). An Ordnance Survey topo map confirmed that this would be the case. The smaller of the vista points has a bench while the other, wider one once had two benches (according to Google Street data) but that no longer seems to be the case. I chose this wider plot and just put down my winter jacket as a blanket as I was rather hot from the hike. It wasn’t too cold today, maybe 8 °C. I set up my mast and settled in for what would be my most prolific QRP SOTA activation to date, with 77 QSOs altogether!

The last time I had operated in Europe was on my trip to the Netherlands last year working Signaal Imbosch, and it had been my first time doing a SOTA activation in about two years. I was rusty, and struggled sending my multi-stroke callsign (PA/AI6CU/P) so many times. I had over 60 activations between that experience and this one, and that made a big difference. I still wasn’t prepared for just how much more active SOTA chasers are in Europe than in the US. There were just as many people calling over each other as I am used to hearing doing POTA on the east coats. It was a good problem to have, and I worked people as efficiently as I could. I got 9 S2S contacts all over Europe. It seems to be the norm over there to send “/P” instead of “S2S” to get the caller’s attention on CW. I even got to work a couple US stations: W4DKS and KG8CO on 20m. It was good fun working 21 DXCC entities during a single activation!

I am so glad that I brought my mic as well! It was wonderful hearing people call in from all over England, speaking with various new (to me) regional accents wishing me well on my travels. A number of folks apologized for the cold weather, but London was a balmy 10 °C every day relative to Pittsburgh, which was -10 °C the day I flew out! I think I’m going to do more SSB on activations where I can, as there is something delightfully human about phone QSOs.

On the way back, I continued north to see the Trig Point in the farmer’s field mentioned by so many other trip reports. Just a bit north of the field is a plaque commemorating the Aston Hill Climb, a motor race that ran from 1904 to 1925. A certain Lionel Martin had such a successful run there one year that he named his fledgling car company “Aston-Martin.” Returning to Wendover Woods, I stopped to see the Go Ape ropes course and wooden Gruffalo sculpture. A couple of park employees were gluing purple prickles into holes in the back of the statue, which I assume get ripped out constantly.

I hiked back along the Fitness Trail and ended up on a quiet street called Beechwood Lane, which brought me back to the town center. There’s a neat bookstore and a place to get some cheese. I picked up a hunk of Christmas Wensleydale and got back on the train home. This outgoing train (4pm) was absolutely packed! Lots of people were coming into London for holiday festivities. I was surprised to see a family sharing a few bottles of wine during the ride in, but I guess you’ve got to get in the spirit!

• Trailhead: 51.76191, -0.74728 : Wendover Railway Station
• Map:  [OS Map]
• Route: I took a 5.5 mile RT hike through town of Wendover and park, seeing a couple of interesting sites. Direct route to operating site about 2.25 mi; about 130m elevation gain.
• POTA: GB-1850, Wendover Woods Forest Reserve