First things first: go properly togged out. Why - the thought recurs as we climb higher and higher into the Sheeffry Hills - have I brought my handbag? Up these craggy, circuitous sheep-trails, what need could one possibly have for blusher and a Lancome lipstick (Rouge Lyrique)? "Sure you'd never know who you'd meet," says Martina O'Grady, wife of expedition leader Wilson Robb, as we plough upwards, five prospectors on the gold trail. Wilson, a geologist from Greenock in Scotland, started Geotreks earlier this year. It is a tourism venture offering "Discover Mayo's Gold" weekends and daytrips not far from the southern slopes of Croagh Patrick. He picked the right spot. When they say there's gold in them thar hills, they mean it. After the finding of alluvial gold here in the 1980s and the enormous controversy about whether commercial gold mining should be allowed near such a national sanctuary as Croagh Patrick or on the gold-rich island of Inishturk out in nearby Clew Bay, it's no secret this part of the country is coming down with the stuff. And the good news is that as commercial development now seems a non-runner, it's all still here. It may not be Witwatersr and or have the potential of Homestake, South Dakota but, as Wilson says, it only takes two or three grams in a tonne of rock to make it profitable, so pan on.
"Follow the sheep: the sheep know best," says Wilson - which sounds fine until you start spotting the odd sheep's carcass rotting Deliverance-style further down the crags. Once you've adjusted, however, this has the added-value effect of impressing on you that this sure is different from your average day at the office. Wilson has a habit of giving passionate speeches halfway up the hills on what's obviously the great love of his life (after Martina). "The landscape is telling you something. Every feature, every mountain," he waxes, "every stream has something to say about what's been going on. There's 600 million years of history in this place," he says, so compellingly that you're a bit surprised Caher Island, out there glistening on the ocean, and the nearby Mweelrea Mountains aren't shouting back, giving up their stories and secrets from the start of time. He's strong on the notion of rocks as a library, if only you have the language to understand their text. But here, it doesn't matter if you don't, because Wilson is the perfect interpreter. He says it's called plate tectonics - but the way he tells it, it's nothing like as dense as it sounds. One group recently was a party of 11-year-olds booked by a parent as a birthday party for their daughter. Now they probably all want to be geologists. We're straddling the Carrownisky river down which the gold tumbles from its mother lode, carried by the rocks, stones and silt as the water makes its way to the sea. The Egyptians may have trapped their gold in sheeps' fleece but Geotreks provides sieves, pans and shovels. And, as we start the descent to the river, Wilson also provides a hint of the gold bug that happily afflicted him eight years ago when he first saw gold in a stream in Sutherland. "Once you get the gold fever it's hard to push it off," he says, obviously as smitten as any old Californian 49er or those boys in the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. When the gold shows up at the bottom of the pan, tiny it may be and a bit battered after its rocky descent downstream, but there's no mistaking its bright, untarnished yellowness. With one London jeweller offering an Irish prospector £1,000 an ounce for Irish gold for wedding rings, you could be laughing all the way to the bank as quick as you'd say "Winning Streak". MEN have fought wars over gold, conquistadors have travelled in search of it and cities such as Johannesburg and San Francisco grown out of famous rushes for it. The state of nations has been measured by the health of their gold reserves. With each tiny particle you take out of the Carrownisky, you join an adventurous line. It's not the Klondike but with a bit of imagination, it can feel close. After an hour or two on location we were humming North To Alaska (. . . going North, the rush is on . . .) under our breaths when we weren't huffing and puffing.
You do need, incidentally, to be moderately fit to take part. There are no sherpas available in south Mayo. Wilson does supply wellies for all, however. Like all shrewd prospectors, Wilson isn't telling exactly how much gold he's found to date. One clue, however, is that his wife's wedding ring wasn't panned from it. It was bought in Lazlo's in Galway. "I might have been a long time waiting to get enough for a ring," says Martina, who met Wilson when he came to her native Clare Island to make a geological map for his thesis. Hoots of laughter fill the air when she's asked what locals think of her making off with a gold-digger. Her father, who lives on the island, thinks they're mad, she says. In true altruistic and environmentalist spirit, suggestions are made that the ideal thing is to throw the gold back into the river at the end of a day's panning. However, no one is checking. Whether or not The Irish Times made its fortune in the Sheeffry Hills is the kind of privileged information argonauts keep between themselves and their bullion dealer. Put it this way: watch the markets. Geotreks Tours Ltd can be contacted at 098 28702
