As I arrived in the car park on Tuesday afternoon there was a strong easterly wind blowing in from the Urals with the hint of rain in the air. I had not really been expecting to detect so I had left my romper suit at home but I dressed up as well as I could against the cold, fired up the CTX (which still had the stock coil on) and set to work.
As usual there were lots of grotty coins against the sea wall and I quickly knocked out my parking money and a solitary pre47 sixpence. Despite all the positive signals it was it was hard digging amongst the boulders and not much fun.
As the tide receded it became obvious that the sand had recently moved around a bit and the place where I usually detect was covered by heaped up mussel shells. I worked there as best I could until flat sand started to appear and then I started finding coins and bullets in some quantity at a depth of about 10 inches or more. A lot of the coins were Victorian coppers but I also found some silver pre-decimal coins, a small 9ct gold padlock and a very unexpected fragment of an encrusted and brittle hammered silver penny of Henry III. The 0.303 cartridges are dated 1941-43 and were fired from a machine gun rather than a rifle and were all from one spot.
By then my hands were cold and I was well satisfied so I decided to call it a day. However, as I detected back towards the car I hit another large patch where there were lots of signals deep in the black sand. Again they were mostly old coppers but with a reasonable proportion of Viccy silver coins. This was of huge interest to me as there just couldn't be that many signals in black sand without a ring or two lurking somewhere. Sure enough after and hour of diligent searching a nice 18ct ring with a diamond and a couple of rubies jumped out from only a spit down next to a big bit of iron. It had a lovely hallmark for 1876/77. A little while later the engraved 9ct childs ring came out dated 1928/9 from about a foot or so down. By then the finds rate had slowed down and it was getting dark so I finally headed home.
The next day a visit was cancelled so the opportunity arose to see what I had missed. This time I was properly insulated against the cold and I put on the large coil, which is my usual choice for beaches. After recovering my parking money and a silver ring against the sea wall I detected in the same general area as before and, as expected, I found that finds were much fewer and generally a lot deeper. Once again there were still lots of old silver coins and one nice signal even produced another 18ct gold ring again from a considerable depth. Incredibly it was also dated 1876/77.
The finds from day 2 are the ones in the sieve in the first photo and the front half in the second.
All in all it's been a productive week for the yellow stuff and not too bad for the silver (and the fat lady still hasn't sung yet either). No real prospect of the bathroom ever being finished though.
