Friday, August 8, 2003

Greetings,

It was a beautiful day here in Weardale, temperatures were perhaps about 78, with a light breeze and blue blue skies. Kerith and I opted to make the 30 mile drive to Durham ( one hour ) and got into town and parked underground by a little before 11. This is a great town to walk around and we did. I needed running sneakers and found them, as a bonus there is a Clark's store in town and they carried the shoe I find the MOST comfortable to be in, so I picked up another pair. Kerith found a pair of kitchen tongs -- not easy, she has been looking for them in about 50 stores and got lucky by asking. Our favorite cheese shop in the Northeast is in the covered market downtown and we picked up some of our favorites, unavailable in the states, namely smoked applewood, Mrs. Blue blue ewe's milk cheese and Isle of Mull white sharp cheddar. A final stop at Thornton's for dark chocolate coated candied ginger and dark chocolate coated marzipan with almonds for Kerith rounded out the morning.

We stopped and had lunch at the Millrace Inn in Wolsingham on the way back and we both had the Cumberland sausage with Yorkshire Pudding. Got back about 1 in the afternoon. I changed and headed up to the Rogerley mine. Everyone was involved in timbering the South West-Crosscut which was finally completed about closing time around 6:00 p.m. I opted to give a try on the small excavation on the north side of the North West-Crosscut. This is an area about 18" high going back about 6' and about 4' across slopping into a large sharp pointy rock, very uncomfortable and a bit tight for yours truly. I spent the rest of the afternoon lowering the floor to give about 3' of space in there and little else other than small gem twins for my efforts but I am getting close to making some real progress in there. So after several days of little production, with the exception of a purple cube pocket near the adit face with epimorphic quartz and some secondary purple twins on that we are ready to proceed.

Tomorrow I have a number of people coming by for a visit to the mine, if the weather continues like it was today it will be an exceptional time for all. That's it from this place way north of Lake Woebegone.

Best Regards,

Cal & Kerith

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