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After one of the severest winters for a long time, during which the Lake district and Scotland were buried under over a foot of snow round about Christmas, we wondered (as always) if the ploughed fields would even be visible for our annual end-of-February collecting trip to Fife.

As it happened, they were; but when fields have been covered with snow the thaw leaves a peculiar glutinous coating over everything which serves to translate vast weights of sticky mud to our boots and also makes any potentially visible agates very difficult to see. The weather was pleasant, though still very cold with intense over-night frosts. We are used to extracting agates from rock exposures with hammer and chisel but it was a novel experience to have to use these implements to get agates off the surface of a ploughed field! However, though the results of our searches were not as prolific as in previous years we nevertheless had some interesting, and occasionally quite unusual, finds by the end of the week.

A strikingly attractive oddity was a group of beautiful clean and very lustrous blood-red quartz crystals which we found on a field on the slopes of Norman's Law (see above). Since the crystals were on a convex piece of rock it seems unlikely that they were part of the interior of a nodule; in any case quartz crystals which are red are an unusual filling for agate geodes. We also found a peculiarly elegant agate from Moonzie (see above).

The most outstanding specimen however came from that old stalwart, Tayport beach. This area has been very well picked over the years, and as it is not a storm beach it does not get much replenishment with new stones, therefore we were not very hopeful of finding anything of significance. So it was with delight that we bagged one of the best sagenitic agates we have ever seen (see above).

A few weeks later we made our usual trip to the Dunure area, where we did quite well. However, we were dismayed to find that the farm which has produced extraordinarily beautiful onyx landscape agates for us has now changed hands and the new owners have stated their intention of farming exclusively livestock, so there is now no future ploughing in prospect.

We can only hope that the bottom will fall out of the livestock market and that the price of grain and root crops will soar!

We can supply standard or custom size cabochons of Scottish agates and other British stones, also some lovely Australian opal; we can also supply finished jewellery items. Ask us for details.

Cabochons For Jewellery

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