Crystal Hunting in the North Pennines (Summer 2017)

School Summer Holidays 2017

Please consider supporting me by buying me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/northernwayfarer

After I found a nice quartz cluster when hiking up Cross Fell, my daughter was eager to go looking for crystals. So I gave her some choices for the summer break and she chose to go crystal hunting.

Our first visit was Groverake Mine and Frazer's Hush as these used to mine for fluorite. We picked up a couple of small samples but the place had clearly been looked at by other people. We found a place where they had covered up a site where they had been digging into one of the smaller hushes for better commercial value crystals and a quick look on ebay suggests they were professional hunters.

Our next outing we headed up to the fluorite mine at Middlehope. If you visit this area you need to be careful because the lead mines further down stream are protected sites. But the fluorite mine is not but it is still private land and taking rock samples without permission is technically illegal. So use your commonsense if you are out.

I am not a geologist but I've been learning quite a bit on our outings as we try to identify our findings. The two samples I mention about finding near Nenthead were not from the Nenthead site. Do not take stuff from there. I found what I think is Dolomite in a stream on the other side of Flinty fell. The piece that I am hoping is Alstonite but probably quartz, I literally picked up from the side of the road when I stopped to do the timelapse in my last mines video. All the rest are from various streams in the North Pennines... we were out just about every week, sometimes a couple of times a week. We bumped into a few professional hunters collecting crystals for jewellery or to tumble and sell on ebay. Also a couple of amateur geologists and rockhounds.

Once you get into the habit of checking the geology where you are walking, you find stuff like the Cheviot agates which, we picked up on our last two hikes in the Cheviot hills. There were many and the two that we picked up were of no value. Even the nice quartz cluster I picked up is of no monetary value because it has substantial damage on the top.

All in all it was great fun. We both learned a lot about geology and it was a good bonding experience with my daughter.

Our minerals:
Quartz, Fluorite (Fluorspar), Sphalerite (Zinc ore)?, Calcite, Dolomite?, Agate, Ironstone (Iron ore), Galena (Lead/Silver ore).
-----
Music

Hooky with Sloane by Bird Creek
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported— CC BY 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Music provided by FreeMusic109 https://youtube.com/FreeMusic109

Ether by Silent Partner: https://youtu.be/r6En29azNBA

lifepainting by Muciojad https://soundcloud.com/muciojad
Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported— CC BY-SA 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Music provided by Audio Library https://youtu.be/3feCSMbSZQA

-----
Thank you for watching

Please comment, Like & Subscribe

Please consider supporting me by buying me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/northernwayfarer

Видео Crystal Hunting in the North Pennines (Summer 2017) канала Northern Wayfarer