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Location: |
Little Glen Shee | Author: | Don Cameron |
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Location: |
Gold panning at Borland Glen | Author: | Sam Aderson |
| Location: | The alternate afternoon | Author: | Bill Dalzell |
Little Glen Shee
Today’s trip was to examine the top of the Dalradian sequence, the Southern Highland Group, Birnam Grits, and its structure and sedimentary relationships. We could see how the graded bedding was picked out by the refraction of the cleavage in the folds. Much discussion took place on the right way up of the bedding and direction of folding.
Gold panning at Borland Glen
Trekking for 20 minutes across fields and farm track in waders and marigolds was not the easiest start to the afternoon but it was sunny and I was hopeful of finding at least some small speck of gold. The panning site was a lovely sheltered spot with the stream meandering through with nice comfy banks to sit on. For those not panning it was a great snooze spot.
Naomi won't make her fortune (photo: Don Cameron)
In the group there was a variety of gold panning experience from experts to complete beginners and it wasn’t long before the gold started to appear in the pan, much to Don’s relief. It took me considerably longer but at long last it appeared, as soon as you find some you find yourself strangely compelled to keep looking for more and more, just one more pan! By the end of the afternoon most of us had found at least one tiny speck, those who didn’t pan managed to amuse themselves by examining the variety of wildlife appearing in the pans. The area is a gold prospect and a company has the rights to the gold, and we were on the land by kind permission of them, Aurum Exploration and the farmer at Borland, Mr Jim Patterson.
The Alternate Afternoon
Following our examination of the high level folds in Little Glen Shee, the party separated into two groups. The larger group set off south to pan for gold in the Ochils while the second - comprising Graham, Bill, Joan and Hilary - returned northwards to look at barite occurring in vein form in a hillside above Ardtalnaig farm on the side of Loch Tay. The route to Kenmore took a narrow route across a high pass (over than 500m) between Glen Quaich and the eastern end of Loch Tay.
The small occurrences of barite that we came to see lay on the flanks of a hill above Ardtalnaig and were quite different from the massive form of the mineral seen on Tuesday at the Foss Mine. The barite occurs here locally in crystalline form, in veins within Dalradian country rock, along with galena and spalerite. These veins were worked in the 17th Century by the Duke of Breadalbane, an avid mineralogist, but excavation never progressed beyond the stage of small trial pits and adits, because the prime interest at the time was in obtaining lead from the galena, and as such they never became economic. The barite and sphalerite were looked on by Breadalbane as worthless gangue minerals, but for us, of course, the barite, in the crystalline form, was of most interest.
The veins above Ardtalnaig occurred in the Pitlochry Schists belonging to the Southern Highlands Group and cropped out over ½ sq km of hillside. None were more than a few tens of metres long, or more than one or two metres wide and within them, the barite occurred sporadically as white and pale cream bladed crystals, sometimes up to 5cm long. Examples of barite crystals weren’t difficult to find in the spoil heaps, together with minor galena and some sphalerite, but we nonetheless spent ages searching through the waste for better and better examples than ones that we’d already found. The contrast between the two forms of occurrence of this mineral were interesting and is shown in the accompanying photograph.
After we had completed a fairly thorough trawl through the spoil heaps of the various workings we made our way back to Aberfeldy along the south side of Loch Tay, noting for future reference the Crannog Centre on the shore just before Kenmore. From there, as a further small bonus, Graham directed us home through the grounds of Taymouth Castle so that we could view - briefly - the three storey dairy belonging to the castle. Amazingly, this had been built entirely from blocks of white vein quartz. As Graham pointed out, building this relatively modest structure would have taken a completely disproportionate effort, given the difficulties of quarrying and working this exceptionally hard material. Unfortunately, it was placed some distance off the road, so photography or closer examination wasn’t feasible.