Plans have been submitted to dig eight trenches in the Snowdonia countryside in the hunt for Welsh gold.
Alba Mineral Resources snapped up a 90% stake in Gold Mines of Wales Limited (GMOW) in 2018 and said it would step up operations to locate and mine the precious mineral in the Dolgellau Gold Belt.
Alba want to bring Clogau mine near Bontddu back into production and hunt for more gold in the surrounding Dolgellau Gold Belt.
Welsh gold has been traditionally associated with the Royal Family, with wedding rings of royal brides often made from Clogau gold.
Now a planning application has been submitted to planners at Snowdonia National Park to dig trenches to the east of the Clogau mine as the hunt for the precious metal steps up.
Gold Mines of Wales (GMOW) said: "The proposed works would comprise a surface trenching campaign using an excavator.
"All currently proposed trenches lie within areas of farmland and GMOW has discussed the programme of works with the single landowner.
"The purpose of the trenching is to remove the soil cover in the areas of the gold-in-soil anomalies identified with the underlying bedrock being exposed for cleaning, mapping and sampling.
"In total it proposed to excavate eight trenches."
The trenches planned would be up to 2metres in depth, depending on the depth of the bedrock, and are anticipated to be up to 1metre in width. The length of individual trenches would vary from approximately 40metres to 90metres.
The work is expected to take six weeks the trenches will be backfilled after the required exploratory work has been completed.
The results of the trenching programme will be used to assess the merits of a surface drilling campaign over the most prospective of the regional targets.
The founder of jewellery firm Clogau, William Roberts was the last person to mine gold at the Clogau site after finding the abandoned mine in 1989.
Gold was last mined there in 1998.
This gold was stockpiled and the Welsh gold is added to jewellery pieces made by Clogau.
Clogau has bought the Gwynfynydd mine in the Dolgellau Gold Belt with hopes to also re-start mining one day at that site.
