The first part was really a catch-up for the explorers who
missed out last time, unfortunately this was a time when Alexander
couldn’t come so he still hasn’t seen Bellsgrove.
However, we had a fair number of explorers and the weather
was fairly good. The explorers were: Daibhaidh, Kayla, JJ,
Lexi, Mairi and Michael with Fiona and John as helpers and
no dogs again.
We started with a long drive to Bellsgrove and the explorers
were released onto the rather unpromising spoil heap with
a hammer but they found only a few small crystals of galena
and some larger bits of quartz. We crossed the rough ground
and found no more good specimens, then we reached the opening
of the adit known as the Grand Level, which was built long
ago to drain the mines. The flow was much less than I had
expected and some of the explorers in wellies were able to
go a short way into the dark, a lot of hooting and ghost noises
were made in the tunnel.
All too soon they were called back and everyone drove over
to the Ariundle Oak woods where we walked through the wood
and then made the detour along the river to the site of the
old village of Torban, near which we stopped for our Tunnock’s
break. Once again, several small frogs were found and we also
saw a newly-hatched peacock butterfly with brand new colours.
I confess I had forgotten how far the detour was and it took
us a real effort to get back into the woods and down the track
to the Ariundle Centre, taking in a look at the beech tree
with woodpecker holes as we passed.
We were very lucky with our timing because no sooner had we
all got our lunches than the whole centre filled up with bikers,
there were 18 BMWs outside and it turned quite busy for a
while.
I picked out Mairi’s drawing of the expedition by the
bridge – if you can’t read the comments, perhaps
it’s just as well.John Dye
|
|