Monday, July 21, 2003

Greetings,

A cooler, windier day with occasional showers and temperatures probably in the mid 60's, we saw the sun no more than a half a dozen times today in 15 minute interludes.

About 10:00 a.m. I dropped Kerith off at The Drift and she and Jonina were off to Consett to do a shopping; I went on to Stanhope where Tim and Holly Smith from Houston were due around 10:15 at the Durham Dales Center. Right on time though driving the back roads of England can be harrowing for first time right-hand drive users especially when dealing with the eccentricities of English signage and parking norms.

We did a brief tour of Stanhope and purchased lunch at my favorite bakery -- egg and bacon mayo for me (that's egg salad with bacon); turkey salad in a long bun for Tim and canned tuna and slices of white cheese for Holly.

We then proceeded to the Rogerley mine where we spent the entire day digging in the North West Crosscut driven in 2002 and occupied the entire time in an area about 2'x3' in size and produced several bags of fine single twins to 1" and a few larger and several outstanding miniatures and small cabinet sized specimens. Byron spent much of his time probing into the upward trend in the Dipper Extension and produced a superb cabinet-sized plate of gem lustrous twins to about 3/4" and several more than acceptable hand-sized pieces; later in the day to went to the face of the Mick and Lindsay adit and collected the quartz epimorphs of fluorite with purple fluorite and cleaned that area out prior to Dave's blasting at the face about 5:30 p.m.

We were most fortunate at our lunch break about 2:00 p.m. when Jonina and Kerith arrived with supplies to have Jonina spot an adder behind the container. I came charging down from up above to be rewarded with a view of this very rare poisonous snake -- truly beautiful with brown and yellow with black/brown checkerboards on it, perhaps about 20" and maybe 2" maximum thickness.

Tim and Holly followed me back to The Drift where Kerith and Jonina had prepared a fine dinner for all of us and they left for home about 9:00 p.m. - still enough light to read a paper outside. They will be back for one more go at the mine later this week.

I'm relaxed now having spent the past 45 minutes in the big English tub we have here at Burnbrae and looking forward to tomorrow and some time up at the mine.

Best Regards,

Cal & Kerith

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