Job with prospects: how a civil servant became gold-panner

As a geology student, Vince Thurkettle developed a passion for rare minerals.

As a geology student, Vince Thurkettle developed a passion for rare minerals.

While his student contemporaries partied late into the night, he would bundle up in waterproofs and abseil down crumbling old mine shafts in the Lake District by torchlight, in search of rare piece of zinc or copper carbonate.

It was on one such nocturnal expedition that he came across a fellow geologist, who showed him a collection of panned gold. The meeting inspired a "gold fever" that would last three decades, take Vince across continents in search for the precious metal and which has prompted him to leave a managerial job as a civil servant to become a freelance gold-panner.

He now has the distinction of being Britain's only full-time gold prospector.

Mr Thurkettle, now 50, from Norfolk, said: "I was 20 when I went down a mine and saw a torch in the distance. I thought I'd got caught by miners when I realised it was coming from another man down there.

"He took me to his home to show me his collection, which filled a kitchen dresser. When he showed me the gold specimens in the top shelf, it was a life-changing moment and I was captivated. He said he found the gold in rivers but I almost didn't believe him. Until that moment, I thought gold prospecting had died out with the Victorians."

Days afterwards, he hitchhiked to North Wales for his first gold-panning expedition on the edges of the Afon Mawddach river.

"The man told me he had found gold in two big waterfalls, at the confluence point of two steams. I spent nine days camping in the mountains and I found six tiny specks of gold," he said.

Over years, he has indulged his passion for gold alongside a full time career with the Forestry Commission, in a £38,000-a-year post as an assistant manager in the East of England.

But he became disillusioned by the heavy deskwork involved in the post and decided to make a decision to get him back to working outdoors, where he began his work.

The decision was also prompted by his appointment as the president of the World Gold-panning Association, as well as recently winning the British Gold-panning Championships in Scotland, in which competitors had to sift through 40 pounds of sand and gravel to find 12 tiny pieces of gold - a feat he achieved in under four minutes.

His work as a gold prospector has taken him across the globe, from Finland to Australia, California, Japan and the Pyrenees. However, his search gold doesn't appear to bring him riches: his annual income is more likely to be around £10,000.

"It's a big drop in salary but I don't have expensive tastes. I felt institutionalised in my job and I feel like I love what I do now.

"As long as I can travel, I love the thrill of gold prospecting. I have sold gold before and I know which jewellers to go to, but the thrill is in finding gold. It is not about the money.

"In what other job do you find yourself lying in a warm river with a face mask, scrabbling for gold?" he said.

While some of his Forestry Commission colleagues remained sceptical of his adventurous career shift, he said he has every confidence in the decision, not least because Welsh and Scottish gold has a huge premium - well above the set price of gold internationally - because of the Royal Family's preference for it.

"Britain is rich with gold because we didn't use extracting machinery as other countries did," he said.