In April 2013 12 members of the Sussex Mineral and Lapidary Society went on a week's collecting trip to Morocco. This provided an opportunity to refresh our memories about some of the classic Moroccan mineral locations and minerals: Touissit, Bou Azzer, Mibladen, Imiter, El Hammen, Sidi Rahal and Taouz and the superb minerals which have been extracted from these mines, such as azurite and malachite, anglesite, apatite, fluorite, wulfenite, vanadinite, silver, proustite, erythrite, roselite, cobaltocalcite, skutterudite…Of these I think the silver, vanadium and cobalt minerals are the most appealing.
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One of the magic moments of the trip occurred high up in the High Atlas mountains in the isolated village of Tirrhist, near Imilchil. The whole village turned out to welcome us and they took us through their village and across a river to a basaltic cliff which appeared to contain some very unpromising, powdery white zeolites.
However, one of our group, John White, opened up a large vug of good quality, crystal clear mesolite/natrolites and we extracted over 50 exceptional specimens. As it was April 23rd (Shakespeare's birthday) we named it the Shakespeare Pocket.
Our guide, Pierre Clavel (a French mineral dealer) showed off his knowledge of English, by quoting: “To pocket or not to pocket? That is the question”.
sussexmineralandlapidarysociety.org.uk
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