Tuesday, June 10, 2003

Good Morning. The weather - yesterday was sunny and warm despite predictions of rain for this week. I think it dripped a bit over night because everything was wet this morning. Right now we are experiencing short bursts of sunshine alternating with ominous gloom. Typically schizophrenic weather in these parts.

Yesterday was a "fire drill" sort of a day, with an inordinate amount of running around seemingly required to accomplish the day's scheduled tasks. With the Peugeot lying moribund in the quarry, I had to drive Byron and Dave in for their work shifts. Jonina called John, the head mechanic at Watson's Garage and made arrangements for him to meet me at the quarry gate at 1030. I dropped of the guys and headed back down to the gate, where I waited for about a half hour before giving up. I then headed out to see if he was at the garage, in case the meeting arrangements had gotten confused, only to be told that he was out running errands (I later found out that we were likely crossing paths on the road). By this point, I had time only to accomplish a badly needed refueling of the auto before meeting a tour group from the British Geological Survey at noon.

A group of folks from the BGS, headed by Brian Young are currently working on a project trying to determine the origins of the metasomatic flats here in the North Pennines. These flats are the source of much of the economic minerals found in these parts, including the fluorite we get from the Rogerley, but their mode of formation is poorly understood. In these days of "fiscal frugality" there is rarely the funding for these sorts of field-based studies, and being trained as a field geologist myself, I was happy to be able to help these folks. After a quick lunch, everyone piled into their old battered Land Rovers (one of them even had some moss growing on it, which I found particularly impressive) and we headed off to the mine.

The Rogerley is perhaps the only working mine remaining where these types of mineral deposits can be seen in fresh exposure, and we currently have good mineralization showing in several places. Most tourists we get at the mine are collectors and interested primarily in seeing (and acquiring) good specimens. This group, being geologists, were waxing poetic about things such as wall-rock alteration patterns. I told them to help themselves to all the altered wall-rock they could carry.

Upon emerging from the mine for our hose-down, I found that our compressor had been delivered, which entailed another "fire-drill" story. After calling Watson's, Jonina had gotten in touch with the compressor rental company, who said they could deliver a unit that afternoon. Jonina explained to them where it was to be delivered and suggested that, given the small track into the quarry, a small delivery truck would be advisable. She met the driver at the quarry gate only to find the unit being towed behind what constitutes the local equivalent of an 18-wheeler, which remained parked in the middle of the road for a time as Jonina fussed with a recalcitrant gate key. If that's a small truck, I can only imagine what they think a big one is! At any rate, after several failed attempts to negotiate the tight turn at the top of the road into the quarry, Jonina had to run over to the sawmill and ask Alistair if he could send over one of his men with their forklift. During all this, Jonina was evidently able to connect with the folks from Watson's and we got the Peugeot resurrected as well.

With all this frenzy of activity, the one thing that got squeezed out of the schedule was a shopping trip to Consett, so dinner came down to crackers and cheese. No matter, I don't think anyone would have had the energy for anything else.

On today's schedule is some more sawing for me, Dave and Byron will try to muck out and stabilize the section of the West Cross Cut that has been raining rocks, and Jonina will be, among other things, going up to the Safeway in Consett. In all the running around yesterday, I was remiss in not taking any photos, so today's is an archival photo of Jonina and Sarah hard at work cleaning specimens.

Forward in all directions…

Cheers,

Jesse, Byron and Jonina

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