Durham Gold…

Cumbrian Minerals posted about this on Facebook, and with their permission, here is the following…

Cumbrian Minerals is a friendly community for anyone interested in the minerals and mining heritage of Cumbria and the North of England. Click on the highlights & to see what else Cumbrian Minerals have to say…

Gold has turned up in tiny traces around the River Eden, Caldbeck fells, Borrowdale, and Sedbergh.

What’s there is alluvial, which is basically very fine flakes of gold that have been washed out of surrounding rocks over time and carried into the river gravels.

It’s mostly erosion doing the work, slowly releasing small amounts of gold from higher ground, including parts of the Lake District and nearby areas.

Around Sedbergh, small traces have been noted in streams and gravel beds, but again, they’re extremely fine.

You’re talking specks, not anything you’d spot easily, and certainly not nuggets.

There’s no history of anyone mining gold here on a commercial scale.

It’s always been too scattered and in too small quantities to be worth mining, but the fact that we have it in the county is exciting.

So while gold is present in the River Eden system, it’s more of a geological footnote than anything else, something that’s there in the background rather than something people ever worked for.

Before we start any prospecting, we must obtain the land owner’s permission, and please take into consideration the environmental impacts…

Below is just some of the equipment for gold prospecting .

Many of these kits or individual bits of equipment are readily available in the UK, on eBay, Amazon, or most Treasure Hunting shops, along with gold panning courses which are an ideal, if somewhat different birthday or Christmas gift…