That's right, gold from Scotland! Lesser known that its Californian counterpart, Scottish gold is described by Adam as "rarer than rocking horse poo"!
Adam took part in hand panning gold during filming for the BBC's One Show
Our nuggets are panned by hand by Adam’s friends Leon and John in the freezing mountain burns (Scots Gaelic for small river). The localities of Tyndrum on the West Coast, and Leadhills in Wanlockhead are now popular places to find these rare nuggets.
Satellite view of Wanlockhead (Google images)
However, even if you are a professional, it is still a challenge to find more than a 1/4 of a gram of gold a day, and that's once you have spent an entire day preparing the river! This involves removing the big rocks, in order to get down to the bed rock, where the gold lies hiding in the cracks and crevices. It is then collected by a process know as sniping, i.e. crawling along the river bed, scraping the gold from the bedrock. The material is then panned by hand to separate the small stones and gravel from the gold.
One of the panner's collections - this gold has taken many, many uncomfortable hours (and lots of luck and patience) to acquire!
Now that's what we call a product of love!
We've procured a small stash of naturally shaped Scottish Gold Nuggets, and they feature in our Outlander inspired 'Standing Stane' (or 'Standing Stone') sterling silver pendants.
Update: As of August 2021, we are proud to present our new website, which specialises in environmentally sound Scottish Gold! Two Skies has been reluctant to work with gold previously (only ever striving to use recycled gold) as commercial gold mining is incredibly environmentally destructive. Now working with a small team of old school gold prospectors, who collect gold by hand, we are delighted to debut our Scottish Gold jewellery!
