Wednesday, July 16, 2003

Greetings,

Some delay in getting the email up and running but with the expertise of Bill and Jonina Pogue at the helm they whipped the computer into line.

Kerith and I arrived Saturday afternoon into Weardale after spending Saturday morning viewing Peter Briscoes collection of fluorite's and other English minerals. He has wonderful fluorites but I found particularly fascinating the cerussites, leadhillites, anglesites and pyromorphites from a quarry less than 2 miles from his home. They would have been mistaken by me for Leadhhills, Scotland.

Weather here has been outstanding, no read that hot, it is scorching up here by local standards -- 82F yesterday.

Monday I spent three hours at the mine getting my feet wet again, so to speak. You have to ease your body in slowly to getting used to being in positions it has not seen in over a year. Truly amazing how contorted you get digging specimens. I had modest success and came up with one nice hand sized plate covered with lustrous gem twins to about 3/4" on edge and some spiffy thumbnails.

Tuesday was spent shopping at the local CostCo in Gateshead about an hours drive from St. John's Chapel. I got back early enough to spend the afternoon underground reacquainting my body again with positions it had not seen in 24 hours. I continued my digging in the Dipper Pocket and was rewarding but lots of average material and one or two outstanding specimens. It appears that this pocket zone continues to the east and will require some timbering in preparation for blasting to see how much farther it goes and how much better it might get.

That's it for this update.

Regards, Cal & Kerith

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