Expedition 295 - 21st September 2013
Bellsgrove and Ariundle

 


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








Contact the site by email