Expedition 293 - 24th August 2013
To the Mines

 


A most unusual expedition, since it wasn’t me running it, maybe that explains the big turnout, we had eleven explorers: Alexander, Archie, Daibhidh, Fern, JJ, Lexi, Ollie, Parker, Robbie, Rowan and Zack, with three dogs, Basil, Rosie and Tiggy to keep us in order.

We all drove to Strontian and found a pretty big crowd waiting for the mine visit. It seemed to be a bigger crowd than had been expected and it took a while to get us all organised, since we didn’t fit in the minibuses. However, we took off with two minibuses and a load of cars and somehow we all managed to park at the mines.
Jim Blair of the Lochaber Geoparks gathered us together and gave us a good rundown of the mining activity at Strontian and then took us for a walk along the line of the old mineral vein, with many warnings about the abundance of deep holes we might fall down. At intervals we all stopped and Jim showed us some examples of the minerals to be found.

We eventually made our way to the big mine area where we peered over the edge at the groove cut in the hill by the miners and stood at the entrance to the adit where a railway track disappeared into the darkness under the hill. I had a chance to get a quick word with the mine owner, not about the mine but about the many swallows he had nesting in his workshop.

Everyone then made their way back to the cars (there was a second tour following ours) but we hung back for a while and had our Tunnock’s wafers next to a piece of mining machinery. When we got back to the cars, I tried to get round everyone to tell them to stop at Bellsgrove for a quick look at the features there, but two cars got away so some of the expedition missed the next bit.

We stopped at the big pond above Bellsgrove and the explorers had a look at the burn across the road. This comes from an adit cut into the hill and known as the Grand Level. Several of the explorers were able to use torches to go a little way into the adit, but not too far. Then we got back into the cars and drove down to a spoil heap where the explorers could use a hammer to break off some mineral crystals from the pile of rubble.

After this, I came home but most of the expedition stayed for more demonstrations during the afternoon and by all accounts they had a great time. Next time we go to Strontian we will get to the Fee Donald mine where there are much better spoil heaps for collecting minerals.
Unfortunately this was one of the rare occasions when we didn’t get either a photograph or any drawings.

John Dye






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