Field Trip Report, Flamborough, April 1 2005

The weather, which earlier in the week had been forecast to be rainy and cold, turned out to be very nice, with highs in the low teens and lots of sun. Gary Winkler and I arrived at 9:30 AM, where we were met by mining engineer Chip Lee who explained the rules and showed us some nice specimens on his desk that he had personally collected. He then led us down to the collecting site among huge blocks of recently-quarried armour stone (dolostone). Flamborough is a working quarry, and we were constantly aware of large machines moving in and out of the area adjacent to where we were collecting.

Some of dolostone blocks had nice large pockets with gemmy fluorite (up to 3 cm cubes) and golden-orange sphalerite. The larger fluorites tend to be tea-colored, while the smaller ones are clear. Flamborough fluorite fluoresces blue-white under short wave and white under long wave ultraviolet; it was often very difficult to remove without breaking. There was also some minor marcasite and galena. Since Chip Lee had told us he had not found any galena for his desk, I gave him some of the small pieces I had found.

Gary Partlow (left) and Gary Winkler (right) point to their find.

Due to teaching duties, Gary Partlow could not make it until 1:00 PM, but still managed to make some very good finds before we had to leave at 3:30 PM. Gary Winkler found a beautiful plate of dozens of intergrown fluorite cubes, some as big as 2 cm, and I found a pair of intergrown fluorite cubes with one 3 cm in size.

Some club members have apparently been visiting Flamborough on a private basis for some time, but the quarry owners have been reluctant to let our whole club in for a field trip because of some bad experiences with collectors in the past. It's very important that we maintain good relations with quarry owners and follow their rules if we want to collect there in the future. In particular, we must be very careful not to leave any tools behind because the hard steel can damage the machinery. Chip Lee is open to letting us in to collect again, and I'll try to set up another trip for our club in the fall of 2005.