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Monday 22 September 2008

The Motherload






My Mate Brian rang me last night. We've had a couple of explorations of a small valley in the North Pennines recently and the last one provided us with lots of things to do - such as poking around in the leadmines and in the rubble of the extensive flood debris that lines the floor of this little dale. One (actually, two) of the things we found were some very large lumps of iron pyrites - fool's gold.... Any road up, Brian had been having yet another poke around this little gem of a place and had found an enormous lump of the stuff - and I'm talking motherload here, or , rather, these were his words. Its quite exciting to find a lovely great lump of shiny rock. The one I found the other day weighed in at just under 4kg, mainly due, I suspect to the damn great lumps of iron in it.

So, here it is in the blog. I'm not going to say exactly where it is, though, partly because some people in a pub seemed over-interested in our samples and there's also some wildlife stuff there which certain other people could well show an unhealthy interest in, specially as the place is quite secluded. The thing is, though - I'm going to have to go back there myself and have a look. Pics include some flood debris (fascinating, I know....) and the cairn (Marshall's Cairn) near the place and samples of the rock we've found.

5 comments:

Phreerunner said...

Hey Mike
Congrats on the blog - hope you enjoy writing it.
I've already replied to your comment on my posting for yesterday - to let you know that Keld now has a pub.
All the best, have a good trip.
Martin

Mike Knipe said...

Tanks Martin, I noticed the comment and have (probably) amended my plans (although a wild(ish) camp next to a pub is still a bit attractive...))))))

This post could hold the record for the number of incorrectly posted brackets - and, yes, this blogging stuff is great fun innit?

)))) (I think thats enough brackets)

Mike Knipe said...

Bugger , I msspelled "thanks".

Elpus said...

Hello, Mike.

Lost your email address in my recent hard drive disaster, so this is just a quick notelet to say that your 2006 Pennine Way story is now online HERE

Great stuff!!

Anonymous said...

Cheers Phil _ I had a look and you've certainly done some hard work making it readable and, well, quite pretty in parts, too.
Thanks once again!
Mike