GOLD GYPSY pt1

I’ve been asked many times on how I got into gold prospecting, and the usual retort was, reading an article on ‘Gold in the UK’ in a monthly magazine I used to subscribe to. Although that is more or less the truth, it does go back a further few years earlier.
My very good friend Neil introduced me to the joy’s ‘treasure hunting’ through the use of a metal detector. I had something like 3,500 acres of Berkshire down for rough shooting and so it was a simple matter of approaching all the relevant farms for the permission for metal detecting.
To be successful with a detector a great deal of library research was paramount. Then there was the field research walking great tracts of ploughed fields for signs of habitation, outcrops of stones and pottery and the like. Talking to the old folk in the village for their remembrances also was a very great tool to be successful. This research probably accounted for maybe 75% of detecting with the final 25% actually swinging a machine in front of us for six to eight hours in all weathers come wind rain or shine.
In the very early 80s the ‘Treasure Hunting’ magazine had an article about gold panning in North Wales. Although I was very successful with my Whites Di series 3 detector at that time, the thrill of finding free gold was very very alluring, especially as the price of gold at that time was around $900 and ounce.
Neil found an article in the metaliferrous mining regions of the south west, briefly outlining the find of a one ounce nugget in the Carnon Valley in Cornwall. I had also come across an article of a few lines saying that a previous vicar of the parish (North Molton) had found numerous sizable nuggets along the River Mole. I had a friend who had moved to a hamlet north of there and so a quick phone call later, saw us motoring down to the West Country. Fortune upon fortune, when we told my friend what we were about he said he knew exactly where the mines were located. He continued saying that his house was the mines captain abode, and pointing over the road he said, and that is lower mines wood. The engine house is still there, and at the top end of the wood are the three mines we were looking for.
From then on, any spare time we had found us on the Mole prospecting. From the Mole we progressed to a lot of streams running south of Dartmoor, South Hams and a variety of other rivers and streams in the south west.
What with one thing and another my ‘gold fever’ abated and we ceased going out together; Even detecting took a back seat as I endeavoured to sort out a variety of personal issues, like moving house, the loss of a loved one through cancer, being made redundant from my job, and the list went on.
I eventually got my life back together and gathered funds from detecting here and there.
For many years now I have relied on this ‘Treasure Island’ to supply me with a source of income and I suppose I could be classified as a ‘Gold Gypsy’.
My original intent was to take a leap of faith and try to recapture my youth by fair means or foul. As a lad we lived a very Huckle Berry Finn/Tom Sawyer life-style, we would hunt and fish, collect nuts and berries, play over the fields, swim in the brooks, made bows and arrows, they really were the halcyon days of summer. As we grew older we fell into the trap of buying a car, a house, getting married etc which is all a drain on our very hard won income. We got drawn very easily onto the treadmill of life, and one day is just like the next, treadmill, treadmill, treadmill.
I heard a wise man once say
“If you keep doing what you’ve always been doing-you will keep getting what you’ve always been getting. And to change what you’ve been getting you have to change what you’ve been doing”.