New faces at the November Cornish Mining Sundowner

Perhaps due to the atrocious weather there were only nine at last night's sundowner at Falmouth's Chain Locker but, as always, there were a few surprises. It was good to talk to three young geologists from Cornish Lithium, and to hear how things are progressing towards production of lithium from the geothermal brines in the old mining areas. We will hear more of this in a keynote lecture from Cornish Lithium's Lucy Crane at next June's Sustainable Minerals '23 in Falmouth.

With Cornish Lithium geologists Sean Cleveland, Hugo Heard and James Spellman

I was particularly pleased to welcome Nigel Powell and his wife Karen to the sundowners. Nigel was a colleague of mine during my time at Camborne School of Mines. 

Dean Eastbury, Karen and Nigel Powell, Nigel MacDonald and Mike Hallewell

Nigel lectured in mathematics and we played a lot of squash together, competing for the number 1 spot in the CSM team. We also opened the batting together for the cricket team, and even produced a research paper together, with the help of final year student Connor Spollen. On his first visit to the USA Nigel presented the paper at the SME Annual Meeting in Denver before we all spent a few days skiing at Copper Mountain.

1991 Denver: Nigel and Connor with Barbara and me

1991 Copper Mountain: Barbara, Connor, Nigel, Phil Newall and me

I look forward to seeing Nigel and Karen at future sundowners, especially the next one, the special one, the ever-popular Christmas sundowner at Tyacks Hotel, Camborne, which will be on Thursday December 15th from 5.30pm.

@barrywills