"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Rusty Hinge wrote:
The message
from (Simon Avery) contains these words:
(Nick Maclaren) wrote:

NM As Cormaic pointed out, builders' sand has not had salt in
NM it for many decades - at least not if bought from an even
NM half-respectable person.

They don't wash it at the quarry, and that's where I get mine from.
I'm a bit hazy about the geology side - I guess sand comes from both
sea and river sources, so if former it would surely have traces of
salt in it?

But I must admit, I've never licked it so can't say.

The tens of thousands of years that's been there, any salt would have
been leached out, whatever the source.

If it was on the surface, yes. But there is a lot of salt underneath
Cheshire, that has not leached in millions of years.

Probably only in places where the geological structure is such as to protect
it from mobile ground water.

I could very
easily believe that many such deposits are mixtures of sand and salt,
and that there are places where salty sand is an accessible mineral
(and not near a current seashore).


Franz