In the rolling peaks of western Scotland, amateurs and professionals are digging and panning for the chance of a fortune. Is there gold in them hills?
Beyond the old buildings of Cononish Farm at Eas Anie, beyond the corrugated sheep sheds and the deer-control fence, Stanley Lister has a weird calm for a man standing so close to a truck of explosives. Nearby, an incinerator bin smokes with detonators cooling off in the late summer breeze and the air is thick with the smell of phosphorus. “Here, the dangers are the midges,” he says through his face mask, before donning a hard hat and ear guards. “Oh, and watch out for the clegs [horseflies]. Nasty buggers.”
Lister, a 29-year-old mining engineer from Lochgilphead, is high up a hillside inside the Loch Lomond and Trossachs national park in Argyll, standing outside the Cononish goldmine near Tyndrum, a petrol stop on the road north to the wildest places in Britain. Action-ready, he is preparing for the next blast, a ritual that takes place twice a day deep inside Beinn Chùirn, home of the only commercial goldmine in the UK, where the mine’s Australian-founded owners, Scotgold Resources, claim £200m is hiding in plain sight. With each detonation, the miners advance three metres down one of three headings, or gold caves, ever closer to their prehistoric reward. “It’s a bit romantic, but I love being underground,” Lister says, splashing through a silvery pool of rainwater towards the mouth of the 1km-long mineshaft with his colleagues. “It’s peaceful and quiet. No distractions.”
