Interesting finds No.3!

When I was a kid, the majority of my family holidays were spent in Airborne or Martin Walter 'Dormobiles': hard to imagine modern youf sleeping in narrow bunks suspended four feet above their parents! My father was in charge of the Special Vehicles Division at Fords, so he could borrow them for nothing.

Still: my memories are all pretty good, not the least because my Dad had this fundamental cockney ethic that education was the answer to everything. We never once stayed at or visited a Holiday Camp / Butlins / Pontins, tending instead to pitch up in a farmer's field or layby. It was just like 'Carry on Camping', with regular strolls to the farmhouse for fresh milk, bread and bacon... Days were spent visiting castles, hill forts and museums or scouring beaches and spoil tips for fossils or mineral specimens. I still have a large collection of self-found specimens from as far north as Wick and as far south as the Lizard - which is where the three samples below originated. As far as I can tell, they seem to be steatite (soapstone), serpentine and opal. It was, in fact, the serpentine I was looking for when I found the others.This colourful rock has been used for centuries to make small carved objects, like the lighthouse I bought with all my holiday pocket money! I also found several types of asbestos, a closely-related mineral, but they're tucked away in the loft.