Dolgothi Gold Mines, Lampeter

I started my lovely week away from the workplace with a trip to the Dolgothi Gold Mines near Lampeter, in South West Wales. It's run by the National Trust, who (if you're not from the UK) look after most British heritage sites. (To be more accurate, I started my week off with dinner and lots of wine, but I'm afraid I was having far too much fun to take photos.)

Welsh gold is very popular, and whilst it doesn't look any different or having anything particularly special about it, it costs a fair bit more than regular gold. This is probably because the Royal Family use exclusively Welsh Gold. If you fancy channelling a bit of Kate Middleton, the best place to buy Welsh Gold from is Clogau Gold, who you can find here. My personal favourite is the Royal Roses bangle.

The charming duo above, are dear friends of mine from Carmarthen. Josh goes to the University and regularly fixes my laptop when it blows up. Monica has just moved here from Iowa to do her Master's degree, and she's blogging about her adventures here.

They have of course stopped mining Welsh gold now, would you like to know why? For every 10 tonnes of shale (^^that stuff) that they dig out of the ground, they get about 100oz of gold. Financially, it's just so not worth it, which is such a shame.

Once we were all suited and booted, we went for a stroll around the site of the mines, before heading down underground. You can just catch a glimpse of our charming tour guide, Daniel. He was a bit camera shy, so I felt like paparazzi, trying to sneakily take a shot. He was fantastic and just knew so much about the site.

The mines were beautiful and kinda spooky, but of course, the lighting wasn't exactly fantastic. My trusty little Samsung just couldn't keep up in the dark.

Josh found a new toy...

We went panning for gold, and found a little Fools Gold. Well, everyone else went panning for gold whilst I observed. I was freezing cold, and the idea of shoving my hands into cold water wasn't that appealing at the time. I did have a go at the end, but then promptly fled for the tea rooms for a nice cup of tea.