Quarry near Ratum, Vosseveld, Winterswijk, Gelderland, Netherlands

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April 4th 2009:

(text and pictures by Bert de Ruiter)

Auke Bleeker, Wim Buyk, Harry Heijkoop, Sannie & Peter Driessen, Marja & Jan v.d. Heuvel, Mieke & Albert Balkenende & me, visited the Ratum Quarry on April 4th 2009. They are still working on the higher levels on the northside of the quarry, near the visitors entrance.
We checked allmost every level of the quarry. The spot, where we found those beautiful Marcasite xx in November, was gone. The second lowest level brought us some nice Pyrites. But we spend most of the day on the lowest level of the quarry, hammering the wall and the plateau, in search of Calcite/Celestine geodes, with those tiny Strontianites in it. It was hard work, but we managed to find some nice specimen. And while checking our finds at home under our bino's, Auke and I both discovered some tiny Galena cubes sitting inside a few of these geodes.

November 1st 2008:

(text and pictures by Bert de Ruiter)

Peter & Sannie Driessen, Jan Voskuil & family and me, visited the Ratum Quarry on November 1st 2008. The barrier at the entrance is replaced by a new gate and the barbed wire is replaced by a solid fence. We found some beautiful Marcasites, some Pyrite and some minor Calcite and Celestine. More info on this visit in our forum...

September 1st 2007:

(text and pictures by )

It always rains when we are here... ! Not much has changed since our last visit in 2006... The interesting Coelestin-zone in "layer 7" is still being worked on and exposed, but there are not so many hollow Coelestin-cavities. Most of the material is massive. No blue Coelestin-xx also. But we found Sphalerit-xx in "layer 13". More info is in our forum...

April 1st 2006:

(Pictures of our visit on 01-04-2006)

Click on the thumbnails to see two panorama's of the Ratum-quarry (259 Kb and 275 Kb).

1986-1987:

The above photo's are from somewhere 1986-1987...

2003:

(pictures by Mark and Niels Phlippeau)

The photo's above of the Winterswijk-quarry were given to us by Mark and Niels Phlippeau.

Minerals:

(pictures by Maurice de Graaf)

The photo's and text for the pics above were given to us by Maurice de Graaf (all collection Maurice).

The Winterswijk quarry is worldfamous in the Netherlands ;-) for it's nice crystals of Pyrit, Calcit, Coelestin, Strontianit, Sphalerit, Galenit und Markasit. The biggest self-collected blue Coelestin from here is 3 cm in length (and proudly standing up on the matrix ;-) and contains small needle-formed Pyrit crystals... Usually the Coelestin is white to reddish (from Fe-oxides from the above layer). The Strontianit is always grown on the Coelestin.
The layer in which the Coelestin is found, is about 30 cm - 1 m thick, just under the thick red layer, and is usually very well visible in the quarry.

Maurice de Graaf and Diederik Visser visited the quarry on 05-09-2003, found only few Coelestin, but lots of massive Calcit ;-) Only 2 of 100 Calcit-'knauers' had a cavity, most were massive...
Mark and Niels Phillippeau visited the quarry in november 2004 and found Pyrit, Calcit, Coelestin, Strontianit, Galenit and Sphalerit! We visited the quarry on 01-04-2006 and found Calcit-xx, Coelestin-xx, Strontianit-xx and of course some Pyrit-xx with the Coelestin...

This quarry is owned by Fa.Ankerpoort, which also owns the quarry 't Rooth.
You can visit the quarry officially, click here for more information or ask on the forum.

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If you're searching for mineralogical articles on this locality (gea-1990-04-131-nederland-winterswijk, geonieuws-1996-08-152-nederland-winterswijk etc...), please contact us...

Also see: Ankerpoort, NGV on Winterswijk, Fossiel.net, Museum Freriks, Geokring keigoed,

Mindat.org on this location.

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