Gold panning in summer sure beats the hell out of gold panning in winter! Instead of freezing water, high river levels, blizzards and short daylight hours, I’m now enjoying warmish water, low river levels, sunshine and looooooong daylight hours. Sure makes a difference. Find more gold too! Had my best ever day today. Here is where I was panning.
And here is the gold I found – 3.1 gms with a lovely 1.72 gm nugget.
Not had as much time to work on this as I’d have liked but it’s still coming along nicely. Here is the opening of the game showing the first few rooms originally made by Raider X. Troels Folmann’s music is superb! The track is from Legend.
The media likes to make out that our soldiers don’t care to fight and come home burdened down with victim syndrome.
Well, the media are 
ing liars.
On Sunday I headed off early on my most adventurous gold prospecting trip to date. To give you an idea, when I first started out gold panning, half an hour’s walk carrying all my kit, 3 hours in the water and the half hour’s walk back to the car exhausted me and I’d be aching for days afterwards. It really is hard labour and my bergen sometimes weighed as much as it did when I was in the TA Paras. My wrists and back were the worst affected and some mornings after an outing my wrists would be so painful and weak I couldn’t lift the kettle to pour myself a cup of coffee unless I used both hands. That was 8 months ago.
Gradually, as I became conditioned to the hard work and the cold, I managed to push myself up to an hour’s walk into the hills with up to 5 hours in the water. But I’d still be knackered for days afterwards. Sometimes after a day’s panning my wrists would be so painful and weakened I thought I’d damaged them.
Well, on Sunday past I humped my kit for two hours over some pretty rough ground, then spent seven hours in the river, walked home again and I’ve been fine and today I could do it all again. My wrists are not sore in the slightest, I still have my strength and my back is fine. Getting fit isn’t something that happens overnight eh? It’s a nice feeling knowing I can handle an eleven hour shift now. Oh, by the way, here is where I found that rather nice nugget last week, behind that outcrop of rock in the foreground.
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Tried a bit of prospecting today on a new burn. Two hour tab (hike, yomp whatever) into the hills lugging all my kit. Must be mad. Found gold though! Here’s a nice little nugget from the trip. I guess this hobby of mine is going to get me properly fit, which was the whole point in the first place. And gold too? Can’t be bad. 
