Gaining permission in England and Wales

My approach is very straightforward. I ask the farmer or householder if they know that there could be gold in their river. I explain that in the 1980s the British Geological Survey sampled every stream in Wales and many in England, for all kinds of minerals, but that they never advised small or larger landowners when varied amounts of precious minerals were detected.

It is always inspiring to bring good news to landowners, especially a small farmer who has inherited his farm from many generations past. When I find traces of gold in the surface gravels, often in the first bucket, this brings anticipation and questions. Who owns the gold? Will there be a goldrush? Would you like a cup of tea? etc.
 
The first two weeks of January, and the last two weeks of March have been mild in Wales and the English border counties. This allowed me to visit many new prospects across several counties, with generally promising results. In only one case did a landowner politely refuse permission. In around half of the streams I tested there were specks of gold in the surface gravels, but I carried out serious prospecting at only four locations in these total four weeks in January and March.

I cannot say yet that the potential amounts in any of these new prospects will compete with the most popular rivers in North Wales, but these were in public forestry, and the very fact that they were becoming honeypots (and taken for granted) led to the attempt by the various authorities to close down panning here, based on misinformation, misunderstanding and sheer National Park panic.

Outside the national parks await many possibilites, but they must be worked for and cherished. I am optimistic that with assistance from other fine minded prospectors I can develop many co-operative prospecting and panning sites across Wales and the border counties of England. I wouldn't claim that the possibilities are endless, but they are more numerous than some narrow minded guys would like us to believe. We know who they are by now from their comments to other subjects.  

Prospectors and amateur panners who want to get involved only have to demonstrate an ability to work in a positive frame of mind, for common goals, in co-operation with landowners. The bandits of the past who took whatever they could and sold to middlemen for minimal value will have no place in the new prospecting fields of the future in Wales and England. The idea is to make pure Welsh and English jewellery and obtain best value for all concerned.

By working together we can increase the educational and (possibly) commercial value of the gold for the landowners and ourselves, and avoid the infighting which tends to develop when one guy gets bigger nuggets than the next. On the sites I have permission to at present there is also the possibility of locating the hardrock sources. At this stage we and the landowner will togehter have to reassess the way forward.

I hope that I will not have to work mostly alone to break the mold. My good pals are in full time work and cannot dedicate as much time as I have towards this project.

Now I am taking a few weeks off to rest up and research geology and law further.

Good prospecting to all.

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Yeah, that's why I'm campaigning to get the present position understood and encourage discussion. Democracy is hard to achieve in prospecting though, because only a few are able and willing to do the hard work and others want to jump in and take the spoils without doing the research, diplomacy, politics and legal knowledge. However, it is the rarity of UK gold which keeps my interest. If it was as common as in the USA/Canada etc. I doubt whether it would have gone unclaimed and unrestricted. Do you understand my point?

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Indeed. I am also lucky to have found several landowners who can provide facilities and who will be able to bring machinery in. Initially I was in the public forestry, like everyone else, where prospecting was much more limited in scope. Apart from the obvious physical challenges, I am kind of living the dream now, on virgin territories. What a lovely summer it should be.

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Yes Gramps. On the rivers in the public forest, the Mawddach and the Wen being the best known ones, weekend panners generally worked on areas with exposed bedrock, working in the cracks, or sluicing black sands, or digging around large boulders. If anyone carried out a more serious dig and got rich rewards others would of course flock to the scene, with inevitable fun for all. My mentor, an oldtimer with over twenty years experience on the Wen alone used to set up a winch in full sight of a public bridge (on a single track road) and haul car sized boulders downhill. It was all part of the local scenery. For years the Forestry Commission guys were happy for this to carry on, and they even advertised the fact that panning was going on in their annual reports! The Crown Estate also celebrated that panning was part of the local economy and culture in its annual reports. But now and then a team would bring in a gravity dredge and scour an entire pool, leaving nothing for anyone else. Sometimes they worked through the night. This is what really upset the forestry, and the environmentalists. The fact that prospecting at this serious scale can in some cases improve conditions for fish never occurred to officials. But, paranoia about non existent species living under boulders etc. etc. finally brought an end to this adventure in the public areas in 2010.
However, I will be able to apply the lessons learned on the Mawddach and Wen to my new prospects, without any interference from officials. And there will be no risk of others jumping in uninvited. Special guests will be able to avail themselves of the basic facilities on site, and enjoy days out without the ususal risks. In one way it is possibly less romantic than real outback trecking and discovery, but I've done plenty of that in the past three years. Yeah, I know that Wales is small compared to the real big country, but it's big enough for me. And there are still many new prospects to check out in the future, although I aim to train new guys (and maybe gals) to spread out. On one site I have an assistant ready with a chainsaw to remove fallen trees which are blocking a promising ravine. On another site a farmer is ready to build a large scale classifier to sift tons of very quartzy rocks. On another site an engineer river owner wants to build a crusher. Bringing all these skills and resources together will form the basis for our co-operative. We could obviously never have created this opportunity on public forestry land. When one door closes another opens.

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Good Stuff There.   

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