Close encounters with a wild dolphin

August is always a quieter time, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere, where many families are away on holiday. So, today's blog is something a little different from the usual- a look back at a magical couple of months in Cornwall almost half a century ago.

This summer has been unusually hot, and thousands of visitors have taken to the sea. Many have joined wildlife safari trips along the Cornish coast, where the relatively warm waters, influenced by the Gulf Stream, attract an abundance of marine life. Seals are a familiar sight, while basking sharks, the world's second-largest fish, are regular seasonal visitors. Dolphins, however, are always the favourites, delighting passengers and photographers alike.

Dolphins are usually seen in pods, but in early 1978 a solitary male bottlenose dolphin made Falmouth his home. Soon affectionately known by locals as "Beaky", he became something of a celebrity, enchanting residents and visitors alike. For a remarkable period, he chose the harbour and surrounding waters as his territory, creating unforgettable encounters for those lucky enough to meet him. 

The safe waters of the harbour were a favoured location for Camborne School of Mines (CSM) divers to undertake their open water training and it must have been an unforgettable experience for them to share the water with a 350 kg dolphin.

Novice CSM diver and Beaky in Falmouth Harbour

One novice CSM diver, however, probably wished he could forget his first meeting with Beaky.

As Diving Officer for both the CSM and Falmouth branches of the British Sub-Aqua Club, I spent many Sunday mornings supervising students on their first shallow open-water dives. One such dive took place in the rocky gullies off Pendennis Headland, at the mouth of the Fal Estuary.

Beaky and CSM divers off Pendennis Headland

Keeping a close eye on the stream of bubbles from a novice and his experienced Falmouth club buddy, I noticed a familiar dorsal fin approaching. Moments later the fin disappeared beneath the surface, only to be replaced by an explosion of bubbles and the student bursting from the water shouting, "Shark! Shark!"

Still visibly shaken, he later explained what had happened. He had felt a firm nudge in the middle of his back and, turning round, found himself face to face with a large dark shape, a towering dorsal fin and two beady eyes. It was hardly surprising that his imagination ran wild, this was only two years after the release of the movie Jaws!

For the more experienced divers, deeper dives were made in Falmouth Bay from the 24-foot Pisces, skippered by local fisherman Ken Dunstan. Ken had recently been one of the four-man team to make the first deep dive on the wreck of the Rinovia (see post of 22 February 2024).

Beaky soon became familiar with the sound of Pisces and regularly accompanied us on our dives. He would even join us on deep wreck dives for five minutes or so before returning to the surface for air, only to reappear and continue swimming alongside us. 

Word of these remarkable encounters inevitably spread, and in early 1978 we were contacted by the BBC's Blue Peter, then at the height of its popularity as the world's longest-running children's television programme. The production team wanted to see whether Beaky might feature in the programme, so they sent a young researcher to spend a day aboard Pisces in search of Cornwall's famous dolphin.

The search proved remarkably short. Just minutes after leaving Falmouth Harbour, Beaky appeared. We dropped anchor and slipped into the water, where he immediately treated us to one of his wonderful displays, much to the delight of our visitor.

Bottlenose dolphins can reach speeds of up to 25 mph (40 km/h), and one of Beaky's favourite antics was as exhilarating as it was startling. He would charge towards you at full speed before suddenly slamming on the brakes just a few feet away, sending a wall of water crashing over your head. The first time it happened it was impossible not to flinch,until you realised he seemed to take as much pleasure in the surprise as we did.

At one point Ken and his seven-year-old daughter, Nicola, entered the water together. Beaky gently approached them before allowing Nicola to hold his dorsal fin as he slowly carried her in a small circle. It was one of those magical moments that none of us present would ever forget.

Nicola is introduced to Beaky....

Before holding on for a memorable ride

It was February, however, and before long the cold drove us back towards the boat. Beaky, though, clearly hadn't finished playing.

He disappeared beneath the surface and reappeared a minute later with the anchor line draped around his beak. Then, to everyone's amusement, he gently towed Pisces just beyond our reach. After several more minutes of his playful antics, we eventually managed to climb aboard. Our Blue Peter researcher was completely captivated by both Beaky and her first visit to Cornwall, promising that the full production team would soon be returning.

Towing the boat out of reach!

I wish there was a happy end to this story, but that was the last we ever saw of Beaky. Shortly after this episode a series of major winter storms hit the area and Beaky was never seen again. No one knows what became of him. He may simply have moved on, died naturally, or perhaps fallen victim to human activity. There has never been any definitive explanation.

Whatever his fate, those few magical months remain one of my most treasured memories of life beneath the waters of Cornwall. Everyone who encountered Beaky carried away a story to tell, and nearly fifty years later, he is still remembered with great affection by those fortunate enough to have shared his extraordinary world.

#MEIBlog

Deep diving in the 1970s

I recently caught up with an old Cornish miner who I had not seen for around 45 years. Terry Angove had been involved with shaft sinking at the old tin mines of the 1970s, South Crofty, Wheal Jane and Mount Wellington, but I knew him not as a miner but as a very competent diver and we talked a lot of our dives in the 1970s, particularly a deep dive in Falmouth Bay on the wreck of the HMT Rinovia.

The HMT Rinovia was a steam fishing vessel, requisitioned as a mine sweeper in 1939. In 1940, it hit a mine and sank and although its approximate location was known, about 2 miles off Falmouth, there was no search by local divers, probably due to the depth of water, about 180 ft (55m), considered to be too deep for diving breathing compressed air. 

In October 1977 a local fisherman spotted the wreck on his echo sounder and identified transit bearings, two fixed and visible objects lining up on the Falmouth shoreline. He reported the wreck location to the Falmouth Branch of the British Sub-Aqua Club (BSAC). At the time I was Diving Officer for the Falmouth and Camborne School of Mines branches of BSAC and as such was responsible for dive planning and safety. The opportunity to dive on a 'virgin' wreck was too good to miss, but it would have to be undertaken by the most experienced deep divers in the clubs, as anything over 100 feet (30m) was regarded as deep and 132 feet (40m) was recommended as the limit for compressed air diving. It was always a source of amusement that non-divers referred to our air bottles as 'oxygen tanks'. Compressed air was used not because it was cheap, but because pure oxygen could be lethal when breathed at only around 2 atmospheres pressure, a depth of only 10m, many wartime divers dying due to oxygen poisoning.

It was decided that a four man team would dive on the Rinovia, Terry and me, Mike Tuffery, a local tug captain and Ken Dunstan, a local fisherman and owner of the 24 ft Pisces, Falmouth Branch's regular diving boat. All of us had many +100 ft dives under our belts, the most recent and deepest being 160 ft (49 m) off the Wolf Rock Reef between Land's End and the Isles of Scilly.

Pisces

Diving to such depths is not just a matter of strapping on an aqualung and plunging below the surface, it requires careful planning and a knowledge of the physics and physiological effects of diving. In planning the dive there were a few things to take into account:

Air Supply: On the surface the average human breathes about 1 cubic feet (0.03 m3) of air per minute. I would be using two (twin) bottles, containing 110 ft3 of air compressed to 160 atmospheres (ats) pressure. The bottles were connected to a regulator on the mouthpiece which supplied air on demand at the pressure of the surrounding water. Every 33 ft (10 m) of depth increased the surrounding pressure by 1 atmosphere so at 10m a diver would be breathing air at 2 ft3 per minute and at 180 ft the pressure would be 6.5 ats, so we would be consuming 6.5 ft3 per minute, imposing a severe limit to the time we could spend at depth. 

Also taken into account was that air at a pressure of 6.5 ats is very dense and there would be an increase in exertion just by breathing it in. This would also be exacerbated by the effect of cold water at depth and the effect of pressure on our neoprene wetsuits. Neoprene is a synthetic material which is full of minute 'closed cells' of nitrogen which provide insulation. It provides buoyancy such that the diver requires a weighted belt (7 kg in my case) to achieve neutral buoyancy at the surface. However as the diver descends, the pressure squeezes the nitrogen in the cells, the wetsuit becomes thinner and loses its insulation properties, and also its buoyancy, so to maintain neutral buoyancy it is necessary to bleed air from the bottles into the adjustable buoyancy lifejacket (ABLJ), an essential part of the equipment. On returning to the surface this added air must be bled out of the ABLJ to avoid an uncontrolled ascent.

So we could plan the dive, and its duration according to our air supply, but the main concern with deep diving with air is the effect of nitrogen on the body.

Nitrogen: Air contains 78% nitrogen, an inert gas which causes no problems when breathed at normal atmospheric pressure, but is a major worry when breathed at high pressure. At depth nitrogen is absorbed in the bloodstream and if the ascent is made too quickly this can be released as bubbles in the bloodstream, which can be fatal. So all divers are trained to make a slow ascent to the surface to avoid this and it isn't of major concern to an experienced diver. 

However at great depth nitrogen is also forced into tissues and ligaments and a slow ascent to the surface may not give sufficient time for this to be released. The gas can bubble out into the joints causing crippling pain- decompression sickness, commonly know as 'the bends'.

Decompression sickness was originally known as Caisson Disease and was first identified in mining in the mid 19th century after the invention of the steam engine, which was eventually adapted to run air compressors. The first use of a pressurised chamber was to mine coal in the Loire Valley of France in 1840, in what was called a caisson (“box” in French). A chamber with an open bottom was lowered down into the ground, and compressed air was pumped into it, forcing water down and out of the bottom. This allowed workers to dig below the water table and into valuable stores of coal.  Miners worked 7 to 10 hour shifts and cases of the curious “mal de caisson,” were soon seen, described as joint pain and soreness that appeared approximately half an hour after returning to the surface.;  These were the first known injuries from compressed air and represented the start of a decades-long journey to find the cause of the mysterious and deadly “caisson disease.”

Although decompression sickness is a serious condition it is totally avoidable by making stops of several minutes en route to the surface. These decompression stops are undertaken at relatively shallow depths where the relative pressure changes are at their greatest, and in our planning we decided on 5 minute stops at 30 ft and 15 feet to allow the nitrogen to dissipate after a maximum of 10 minutes at the greatest depth.

Testing out a prototype decompression meter (on my right wrist) in 1976.
For the Rinovia dive we made use of trusted decompression tables

So, we could avoid decompression sickness but the other effect of nitrogen we could not control, and it was the narcotic effect of nitrogen at high pressure which was our major concern. Nitrogen narcosis manifests itself around 100 ft (30m) and rapidly worsens with increasing depth, such that 132 ft (40m) was recommended as the safe limit for sports divers. The legendary pioneer Jacques Cousteau called it the 'rapture of the deep' and it has also been known as "Martini's law", the idea that narcosis results in the feeling of one martini for every 10 m (33 ft) below 20 m (66 ft) depth. 

Although in retrospect we could have assessed our susceptibility to nitrogen narcosis by downing martinis in the pub, we did this by carrying out progressively deeper dives and by a session in the recompression chamber at Fort Bovisands in Plymouth. A recompression chamber is a cylindrical steel vessel into which air is introduced under pressure (as with the caisson) and is used to force nitrogen bubbles back into the tissues of any diver suffering from the bends, after which the pressure is slowly reduced to allow the nitrogen to diffuse safely. We were subjected to a pressure equivalent to a depth of 165 ft (50m) with no serious effects apart from a slight slowing down in the performance of simple mental tasks, but one of the CSM students succumbed to uncontrollable fits of giggling even at 95 ft (30m) so needless to say he was not asked to audition for the Rinovia dive.

And so, after all the planning we were all set for the dive.

On the morning of October 22nd 1977 Terry, Mike, Ken and I met at Mylor Harbour, Falmouth, and set off in Pisces into Falmouth Bay.  We soon picked up the fisherman's transit bearings and after about 2 miles the wreck showed clearly on the echo sounder in 180 ft (55m) of water. We dropped a 'shot line' a weighted rope, onto the wreck and prepared to dive.

Terry and Mike dived first and as they descended we watched their twin sets of bubbles bursting on the surface, becoming more voluminous the deeper they went as the volume of air in each bubble increased on ascent due to the fall in pressure.

After around 20 minutes we could see them clearly holding the shot line at 15 ft (4.5m) on their second 5 minute decompression stop, after which they appeared on the surface, Terry holding aloft a hurricane lamp which he had found in full view on the wheelhouse, a clear indication that no one had dived the wreck previously.

Terry with the hurricane lamp back at Mylor Harbour

Ken and I then dived and reached 175 ft (53m) before we arrived on the wreck but unfortunately the shot line had moved and we were somewhere on the deck with nothing recognisable. We circled the shot line but there was nothing to see of interest so after 11 minutes we terminated the dive and returned to the surface and our two stops, then the long journey back to Mylor.

At Mylor after the dive, Terry, Mike, Ken and me

We agreed that it had been a rather disappointing venture and it remained my deepest dive until I abandoned diving in 1979 to devote my spare time to cricket! In later years I had a few reef dives in Thailand, Madagascar and the Great Barrier Reef, but diving off the Cornish coast still holds the fondest memories (see posting of 8 March 2012). 

Nowadays the Rinovia is listed in Falmouth's Dive Site list and Atlantic Scuba describes it as a really nice shallow trimix dive. Shallow!  How times have changed. Nowadays advanced sports divers can descend to greater depths by using gas mixtures such as trimix, a blend of oxygen and helium and a reduced amount of nitrogen, which allows safe diving to 210ft (65m) with little worries about narcosis, although decompression stops are still needed. Helium has no narcotic effect and its low density reduces breathing resistance at depth.

Deep sports diving is obviously much different now than in the 1970s. I know that many people that I meet around the world are keen divers so I would very much like to hear of your own deep diving experiences.

Explore Falmouth by e-bike

If you are intending to visit Falmouth in June for Biomining '23 or Sustainable Minerals '23, or for any other reason, you should make time to explore this beautiful Cornish town, and its easy access to other parts of Cornwall, by foot, car, train or bus. Before planning your trip take a look at:

10 good reasons to spend some time in Falmouth 
Make the most of your time in Falmouth 
Swanpool Beach to Falmouth Town  
Falmouth's beautiful North Helford region  

And now an added incentive if you are reasonably fit. For a modest fee it is now possible to flatten Falmouth's famous hills by renting e-bikes from docking bays spread around the town.  The bikes can be rented for single or longer journeys via the Beryl app.

So make the most of your time in Falmouth and Cornwall- you won't regret it.

@barrywills

Lithium and cream- an unlikely combination

Last month I visited Geocubed, a subsidiary company of Cornish Lithium and talked to Project Manager Richard Thompson about the pilot plant which will produce lithium chloride from geothermal waters. The intention is to extract heat from the geothermal waters to power local industries, as at the depth of the current borehole of 5.2 km the waters are at a temperature of 190C. Cornish Lithium will be drilling to more moderate depths, however, and the geothermal water will be returned once the heat and lithium have been extracted. 

Since my visit Cornish Lithium has announced that it has entered into an exclusive agreement with Rodda’s, the iconic Cornish clotted cream producer, to work together to evaluate suitable sites on land owned by Rodda’s, where geothermal lithium production and geothermal heat could be investigated.

Contrary to my posting of April 1st 2017 clotted cream is not produced from an edible mineral, klestrolite, but from cow's milk, and Rodda's clotted cream is well known internationally; anyone who has flown British Airways will be familiar with it. Cornish Lithium will be responsible for designing and drilling a small research borehole to demonstrate the viability of a commercial scale geothermal lithium and heat project. It is envisaged that Rodda’s will be able to use the resulting renewable geothermal heat to potentially decarbonise production processes at its Scorrier based creamery, near Redruth.

@barrywills

Good to be back on the Cornish Riviera Express

Two years on I am at last travelling again on the Cornish Riviera Express from Truro to London Paddington, from where I will take the Heathrow Express to the airport and then, Covid-test permitting, on to Salt Lake City tomorrow for the SME Annual Meeting, my first face to face event since the SME Meeting in Phoenix in February 2020.

Through trains from London Paddington to Penzance began running in 1867 but the Great Western Railway's Cornish Riviera Express commenced operation in 1904, after standardisation of the track gauges between Truro and London and Truro and Penzance. The 255 miles from Penzance to London is regarded as one of the world's great rail journeys particularly the stretch from Penzance to Exeter, a testament to the marvel of Victorian engineering.

It's not easy to build a railway in Cornwall, a rugged county, the remnants of the ancient Variscan Mountains. The Cornwall Railway Company constructed the line between Plymouth and Truro, which opened in 1859, and was extended to Falmouth in 1863. The 70 mile route from Truro is generally west to east, and cuts across numerous deep river valleys that generally run north-south. Under the guidance of the Victorian railway engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the river crossings were made by wooden viaducts, 42 in total, replacement by masonry structures beginning in the 1870s, a few remaining in service until the 1930s.

Crossing the River Tiddy via the viaduct at St. Germans

Leaving Cornwall, the most spectacular river crossing is via Brunel's Royal Albert Bridge, opened in 1859, which crosses the River Tamar at Saltash (reputably where the Wills family originated!) and leads into Plymouth in Devon. It is adjacent to the Tamar Bridge which opened in 1962 to carry the A38 road.

The Royal Albert railway bridge in the foreground, adjacent to the Tamar road traffic bridge

Once into south Devon the scenery begins to change dramatically, and between Newton Abbot and Exeter Cornwall's ancient Devonian rocks are replaced by the softer New Red Sandstones of the Triassic, the line cutting through a number of tunnels as it runs dramatically along the coastline at Dawlish. Often under siege by winter storms it is not unusual for the English Channel waves to crash over the carriages as the train approaches nearby Exeter.

Through the sandstone cliffs at Dawlish
Photo: BBC

Winter storms
Photo: The Railway Magazine

Once past Exeter and into Somerset another major change in the landscape as the train speeds over flatter terrain on its long journey to London, passing through the flat marshlands of the Somerset Levels, which are often flooded.

Flooded Somerset Levels

This is the area of the ancient Kingdom of Wessex, where the Wessex king, Alfred the Great, hid in the swamps and marshes with his men in 878, dependent on the local people for food and shelter, whilst fighting a guerrilla-style war with the Vikings, and it was from here that Alfred set out on the successful reconquest of his kingdom.

The Truro to London journey I must have done hundreds of times, via the branch line from Falmouth to Truro, but I never tire of it. I only journey from Truro to Penzance occasionally however, but this is also a spectacular short trip, passing through the tin and copper mining areas between Redruth and Camborne, where the landscape is dotted with the ruins of 19th century engine houses.  And as at Dawlish, the trains skirts the English Channel, passing by the iconic St. Michael's Mount as it approaches Penzance.

Wheal Peevor near Redruth

Approaching Penzance. St. Michael's Mount at Marazion

If you intend to visit Cornwall then do so by rail if you can. It sure beats the road journey!

@barrywills

2021 with MEI

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Very prescient of Charles Dickens in his introduction to A Tale of Two Cities, which sums up this year, with its promises of better things to come followed by depressing set backs.

In last year's annual summary I ended by saying that we must put our faith in the amazing efforts of the scientists and their vaccines and hope for better things to come in 2021, as another highly contagious strain, emanating from South Africa, had been identified, escalating restrictions. Twelve months later restrictions have again been tightened with the emergence of another mutant strain of the awful Coronavirus, Omicron, also emanating in South Africa.

When will this ever end? We had got used to endless globe-trotting, meeting up with old friends, getting to know new people and visiting interesting places, and personally I will remember 2021 as the first year since 1979 that I have not left the UK. In fact Barbara and I have only left Cornwall once this year, for a week in beautiful Dorset (posting of 23 September)

It was a grim start to the new year with the new variants of Covid-19 threatening to spread across the country and savage the beleaguered NHS, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a complete lockdown of the UK. Travel into and out of the UK became virtually impossible as most of the travel corridors with the UK were suspended and, coupled with Brexit, Britain became, for the first time in its history, an effectively isolated nation. A month later with the vaccine roll-out initiated, and over 15 million people in UK having had their first jab, Johnson announced that we were past the peak of the 2nd wave and "the crocus of hope is poking through the frost and spring is on its way..." It's never good to predict the future! 

At the end of February twelve months had passed since I last boarded a plane, a flight from Phoenix to London Heathrow at the end of the SME Annual Meeting. This year's scheduled meeting in Denver became an online event and I missed not being in my favourite American city to see the Mineral Processing Division's award winners, three old friends of MEI, Prof. Courtney Young, Dr. Frank Crundwell and Dr. Michael Mankosa (posting of 8th March 2021). 

MEI's four conferences this year have all been online events, and I must say how immensely proud I am of Jon and Amanda who accepted the challenge of converting our scheduled meetings to virtual events. Apart from advising on the technical programmes I have had little input and I am pleased to see MEI now being slowly shifted to the next generation.

Amanda's son William recording his Uncle Jon's opening address for one of MEI's 4 events this year
- a far cry from the conference centre in Cape Town's Vineyard Hotel!

The conferences have been well received and the advantage of the online events is that the recorded presentations for Comminution '21, Biomining '21, Sustainable Minerals '21 and Flotation '21 are now available on demand.

I would also like to say that we are tremendously indebted to our sponsors, old and new, who have supported our conferences during these difficult times:

It was good to socialise again in May, with relaxing of restrictions, and the first Cornish Mining Sundowner of the year was held on a chilly evening on Falmouth's Gyllyngvase Beach, followed by further outdoor meetings in Falmouth. 

The July mining sundowner on Falmouth's Gyllyngvase beach

The super-spreader G7 summit in Cornwall in June (posting of 1st July), and a huge influx of summer visitors caused a rapid rise in Coronavirus infections in Cornwall, which soon had the country's highest infection rate, but by September with the crowds dissipating so did the infection rate and with social distancing no longer mandatory we had a welcome return to the Chain Locker pub in September and the CSM Annual Dinner in October, after an enforced break of two and a half years.

A welcome return to the Chain Locker in September

Apart from running the online conferences, Jon and Amanda have been busy with voluntary work, Jon working in a local hospice shop and Amanda as a Mabe Parish Councillor as well as a mentor for a charity supporting people affected by domestic abuse and sexual violence.

They raised money for these charities by taking part in tough long-distance cycling and hiking events.

Amanda and friend on a 25 km trek in the Brecon Beacons in South Wales and Jon after a
gruelling 104 miles, 7 and a half hour Coast to Coast Extreme Route Challenge in Cornwall

Barbara and I had some good hikes during the summer, including the challenging short walk over southern England's highest cliff, Golden Cap in Dorset (posting of 9 September), but our first hike of the year, at Coverack on Cornwall's Lizard Peninsula ended abruptly when I slipped on the very muddy coast path and fell down the cliff, fortunately tangling in painful brambles which prevented a long drop to the rocks below.

Avoid the Cornish coastal path after heavy rain!!

Conditions were much better in October for a 50 year reunion with an old friend from Zambia days, Pete Love, and his wife Pam, who stayed with us for a few days. 

Barbara with Pam and Pete Love at the Crowns Engine Houses, Botallack

And so ends another year of uncertainties, and who know what the next will bring. On behalf of the MEI team I wish you all best wishes for 2022. We had a final 2021 family get together yesterday in St. Agnes and it was great to welcome Flo (right on photo) the girlfriend of 17 year old William. Flo's grandfather, Bob Wyatt, was an international cricketer, captaining the England Test team 15 times, and was vice-captain to Douglas Jardine on the infamous 1932-33 'bodyline' tour of Australia.  The current England test team touring Australia are in need of a few batters of Bob Wyatt's calibre at present!

Happy New Year to you all.

@barrywills

Cornwall at its best for a 50 year reunion

Barbara and I arrived in Zambia in late 1969 and our first of many friends were two single guys, Alan Minty, a mechanical engineer in one of the open pits, a fine squash player who introduced me to the sport, and Pete Love, an exploration geologist.

Barbara with Pete and Alan, Chingola 1969

Like many adventurous young men, Alan, Pete and I aspired to great things, future entrepreneurs who would make their own way in the world. When our contracts in Zambia ended we would no longer have the shackles of employment, and would be masters of our own destinies. 

As I was an "experienced" diver, with 30 dives logged in the UK, and had introduced Alan and Pete to diving in the sunken lakes near Luanshya, it seemed obvious to us that our future lay in running a diving school in Spain and we even registered our company LMW Divers and began to learn Spanish!  A pipe dream of course, and as we settled into Zambian life this was quietly forgotten.

It was not the end of our ambitions to go it alone, however. Pete and I invested in hi-fi equipment and ran a weekly disco, which was soon abandoned as it was obvious that this was not the route to millionaire status.

Saturday Night Fever with Pete, and Brian, the 'security guard'

Alan and I went a different route and invested quite a bit of our savings into a good second-hand Nissan station wagon with the aim of running a successful taxi business, as few of the local Africans owned cars, making full use of buses and taxis. Taxis were everywhere, rickety vehicles carrying inordinate numbers of passengers. Alan had a driver in mind, one of his African workers, who was keen to leave the mine. We planned everything meticulously, possible routes, fares and the commission for the driver, who, having great confidence in us, had given up his mine job. The great day dawned, we gave the driver his final briefing, he proudly took his seat in the taxi, drove away, and that was the last we ever saw of him or the car!! 

Sobering reminders that not everyone becomes a Richard Branson overnight, and after several years in Zambia, Alan, Pete and I moved on along our separate paths, and unfortunately lost touch.

Over thirty years later, however, Barbara and I met Alan and his wife Sheila purely by chance, on a tour bus visiting Robben Island off Cape Town.  We had a great reunion dinner in Cape Town, where we reminisced and caught up on how our careers had developed since our Zambian days. It transpired that Alan had a thriving family business in the oil and gas industry, specialising in, wait for it, risk assessment! Oh, the irony of it! If only we had carried out some form of risk assessment all those years ago our African driver would not have had his early Christmas present.

Lunch in Cape Town with Alan and Sheila Minty, 2006

Over the years I tried unsuccessfully to trace Pete via Google but two years ago I had a message from him on LinkedIn, and we arranged to meet up with him and his wife Pam, who now live in Eastbourne in Sussex. He had left Zambia in 1972 and spent a year at the President Brand Mine, with the Free State Gold Mines in South Africa, before returning to London and working in the Foreign Office for a couple of years.  He married Pam in 1974 and returned to the gold mines, with Vaal Reefs in the Transvaal, then on to the Anglo American Corporation Head Office in Johannesburg. Their daughter Natalie was born in 1979 and Pete then spent 5 years as Chief Geologist on Elandsrand Gold Mine on the Western Rand before returning to the UK in 1984, where he and Pam set up a training business which continued for 16 years, and in which period he dabbled in Management Consultancy and Venture Capital and worked as a geological consultant. 

Unfortunately, due to Covid, our meeting was delayed for two years, but last week Pam and Pete spent four wonderful days with us and we were transported back to days of the young visionaries of half a century ago. Even the weather was reminiscent of Zambia and we were more than pleased to take the opportunity to show them some of our favourite areas in West Cornwall, which seem to be getting steeper each year! Hopefully we might catch up with other friends from the past, via the wonders of social media, and maybe the photos below might whet your appetites to contact us if you are out there.

Maenporth beach, Falmouth

St. Just in Roseland

Levant mine

Crowns Engine Houses, Botallack

Arsenic labyrinth, Botallack

An obligatory visit to Falmouth's Chain Locker

Lizard Point

The Lizard Peninsula

Above Kynance Cove, The Lizard

@barrywills

Cornwall sizzles

We are enjoying hot weather this week in Cornwall with temperatures over 25C. Although the Government controversially removed most Coronavirus restrictions on Monday, overseas travel is nowhere near back to normal, so the crowds have been pouring into the south west, and Falmouth's main beaches have been busy, although the locals have found relative solitude in the nearby coves.

Falmouth's Swanpool Beach

Gyllyngvase Beach

Solitude on Castle Beach, only a few hundred yards from Gyllyngvase

While most people were relaxing in the sun, MEI's Jon undertook a gruelling 7 and a half hour Coast to Coast Extreme Route Challenge three days ago, cycling 104 miles to raise money for Cornwall Hospice Care. He has been working as a volunteer in one of the Hospice charity shops throughout the pandemic. Well done Jon, an elevation gain of 9,753 feet is pretty daunting!

June update- the G7 summit comes to town, and so does Covid

It's a crazy world!  If asked to choose a least likely venue for a G7 summit of world leaders then high on the list might be Carbis Bay, a small seaside village in the far south-west of Cornwall, serviced by one of Cornwall's notoriously narrow lanes. 

Carbis Bay in quieter times

But this was where the summit was held for 3 days, from 11th to 13th last month, causing massive disruption, which somewhat overshadowed the serious topics, such as the pandemic, and the environment, which were discussed by the seven leaders of the UK, USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The head of the Police Federation in England and Wales suggested little thought had been given to security plans, saying that holding G7 in a Cornish resort was 'bonkers' and a security nightmare.

The meeting was held at the Carbis Bay Hotel, alongside a massive security operation, police erecting a "ring of steel" around large sections of the resort, which borders the popular tourist town of St Ives, the G7 leaders being housed at the Tregenna Castle Hotel in St. Ives, which some of you will remember as being the venue for Minerals Engineering '95.

The eyes of the world were on this most beautiful of places last month, but most would be unaware that there is another side to this idyl, poverty and lack of affordable homes, but I will not go into this, instead I refer you to an excellent article by Tanya Gold, who writes with great eloquence on the prostitution of Cornwall.

Over 5000 police staff from across the UK were drafted into Cornwall, around 1000 being accommodated in a large cruise ship moored in Falmouth harbour near the National Maritime Museum (NMM), host to the hundreds of international media representatives. The NMM was, of course, MEI's scheduled venue for last months Biomining '21 and Sustainable Minerals '21, which  were held online due to the pandemic. The cost of policing the summit has been put at £70 million.

The MS Silja Europa and Maritime Museum viewed from Falmouth's inner harbour

Joining the thousands of police officers were hundreds of British troops, including bomb disposal teams and a navy warship, a 400 strong US Secret Service team, and a number of patrol vessels and rigid inflatable boats to help with surveillance. 

HMS Tyne trying hard to blend in to the scene behind picturesque St Ives
Photo: Greg Martin @photogregmartin

Cartoon: Matt-The Telegraph

Falmouth is 24 miles from Carbis Bay, but walking through town was a surreal and unforgettable experience, with a huge police presence, some heavily armed. However, they were without exception friendly and chatty and impressed by the beauty of Falmouth and its coastline.

Officers from Yorkshire take a break by the Fal Estuary at Pendennis Headland

Falmouth was also one of the centres for the various demonstrations that always take place during G7 meetings, and there were large gatherings highlighting the injustices in Myanmar and the Tigray province of Ethiopia.

Demonstrators from Myanmar

Demonstrators from Tigray

The biggest demonstration by far was by Extinction Rebellion, who certainly highlight some of the many problems facing the world, although their methods do not always endear them to the public. Their demands for achieving global zero carbon are also unrealistic, and like many of the public they seem unaware of the importance of mining to produce the raw materials needed for the green revolution (Is zero carbon by 2050 attainable?). Those that I spoke to had never heard of rare earth metals such as neodymium and were sceptical when I told them that in the last 5,000 years, humans produced about 550m tons of copper, but will need to produce that much again in the next 25 years to satisfy the Paris Agreement.

Extinction Rebellion in Falmouth's Kimberley Park

Spreading the word and the virus
Photo: Greg Martin

The Importance of Mining to Society was the subject of a one hour event hosted by the Critical Minerals Association held in Falmouth on the first day of G7. Hosted by Jeff Townsend, the co-founder of CMA, and son of Ian Townsend, well known by many in the mining industry, the speakers were Dr. Lucy Crane, Chair of CMA Perception of Mining Group and Senior Geologist at Cornish Lithium, and John Murray, Founding Principal of the Swann Group, UK.

The message was that we need to change our relationship with society to show the value that we can add to a greener society. There was little in the event that we in our small minerals industry bubble are not already aware of, but the importance of this meeting was that it was part of the G7 weekend and was attended or relayed to the international journalists present in Falmouth, so hopefully they were listening and will make use of it to get the message out that mining is essential. The recording of the live streamed event is available. 

Meanwhile Covid cases in England were rising at the fastest rate since the winter wave, over 90% of cases being due to the Delta variant first discovered in India. By the middle of the month it was evident that the G7 summit was a super spreading event for Cornwall, cases rocketing 2,450% in areas of Cornwall where G7 events were focused. The area around Carbis Bay, where the summit took place, and Falmouth, where the world’s media were based along with many of the officers policing the event and protesters, are now suffering some of the highest rates of infection in the country, these areas now accounting for more than half of all the infections in Cornwall. The rate of Covid-19 infections in Cornwall during the week to, and including, 13 June rose from 2.8 per 100,000 people on the Sunday before G7 began to 81.7 per 100,000. This compares to a national average of 77.4 per 100,000. 

The rate of infection in St Ives rose 2,450 per cent in the seven day period to 733.2 per 100,000 people in those seven days and in a number of Falmouth districts the rates were more than 500 per 100,000, with Falmouth East hit by a 2,000 per cent rise in infections to 600 per 100,000. The largely unvaccinated young staff in the Cornish hospitality businesses are catching the Delta variant and they and their colleagues are having to isolate as a result. This is closing down pubs, bars and hotels at an alarming rate. 

The Cornish people have not been too impressed with our buffoon of a Prime Minister's hypocritical socially distanced greetings to other G7 leaders and the lack of social distancing at other events:

Photos: BBC

It was no great surprise that, the day after the G7 summit, Boris Johnson announced that the planned complete removal of Coronavirus restrictions on June 21st would be put on hold for a further 4 weeks to allow more of the population to be fully vaccinated. Over 60% of adults in UK are now fully vaccinated, which is an amazing achievement by the NHS. The challenge now is for the G7 leaders to make good their promises of donating vaccines to the poorer nations of the world, as we won't be out of this pandemic until all the world is vaccinated.

@barrywills