As the long suffering Mindat community will confirm I am a professional amateur when it comes to minerals with a mind like a....like a ...sieve, yup, that's the one. And not just minerals, I discovered a long time ago that I could turn my hand to most anything and do it with an ability that is quite laughable. Still, blunder on regardless.

So, like most kids, having grown up with a passing interest in fossils, dinosaurs, minerals (as long as they're colourful and shiny) and the like, it finally happened that a few years ago we wound up living in South Devon. On the one hand the Dartmoor, West Devon and Cornish Mines on the other the Dorset Geological Heritage Coast (and now the Torbay Geopark). With that wealth of fossils and minerals to hand here was my chance to blunder about on a previously undreamt of scale.

I wouldn't presume to call myself a mineral collector. I have a collection sure but almost without exception my self collected pieces would indeed pass for dirty rocks as my wife would have it. 'Had a nice time', she'll enquire politely (with an undertone that shouts 'please don't tell me about it') and finish off with 'Oh that's another nice collection of dirty rocks you've put in the sink'. (Meaning 'they'd better be gone very soon because you'll be at work tomorrow and it'll be bin day soon!'). 'One day' I tell myself 'I'm going to find something really spectacular down on of these cold filthy wet dark holes'.

Please let it be tomorrow.

In the meantime I prefer to just go and have a good wander and take photos of the mine sites before they finally get swallowed up by the brambles.