Not many women would wait 40 years for their husband to fulfil a promise.
But Alan Souter vowed to make wife Colinne a ring from the gold he found while panning in Scotland – and it took him four decades to part with his treasure.
The 78-year-old started off with a frying pan during his years as a geology student.
It was then he promised his childhood sweetheart to make her a ring with gold he unearthed.
Alan has since struck it lucky in more than 70 Scottish burns.
But the retired geography teacher, from Aberlour, Banffshire, said: “It took 40 years to get round to parting with the gold to be melted down.
"She said it was a long wait. But I prefer to see it in its raw state rather than it being turned into jewellery.
“You’re the first person to have seen it when you see it in the pan. Until then, it’s been hidden away for hundreds of millions of years.”
He admitted he felt “sad” at the thought of it being melted down. But he handed hundreds of fragments from his collection to a goldsmith to have them cast into two rings – the first 18ct and the other 14ct.
It takes about five grams of gold to produce a ring. Some of the flakes were so tiny that one ring was made from pieces found in 50 burns across Scotland.
Alan said: “There are hundreds of burns in Scotland with gold.”
The largest nugget he found weighed three grams and was stained by iron and he only knew it was gold by the way it moved in the pan.
Colinne, 78, can no longer wear the jewellery due to arthritis – but not before the smaller ring had to be cut from her finger and she almost lost the other.
Alan said: “The ring fell off with another ring so I went out with a metal detector and found one in the compost bin but couldn’t find the other. Then she was picking tomatoes in the greenhouse and there was the Scottish gold ring lying at the base of a tomato plant.”
Both rings are safely stored with dozens of vials containing specks of gold, labelled with the place they were found.
Alan’s basic equipment includes a gravel pump made using a drainpipe and a tennis ball. His panning exploits have taken him to Alaska, New Zealand and Colorado in the US.
Using the gold found overseas, Alan had a brooch, worth about £700, produced and he gave it to daughter Fiona, 56, at the weekend to celebrate her being ordained as a priest.
He said: “It’s a unique brooch with half an ounce of gold in it, so it’s quite a heavy thing. It’s made from Scottish, Colorado, Alaskan and New Zealand gold. She’s delighted.”
Until recently, Colinne, who he met at school, joined him in his quest and the couple would work the rivers and burns together.
But he said the monetary value was never of interest to him and even after more than 50 years of panning he still “gets a buzz” when he finds even a microscopic flake.
Alan hopes his collection will be split between his two daughters and the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, to help geologists identify how gold was formed in different areas.
