Yesterday I set off for mid distance beaches to see how the easterlies have affected them. There were plenty of broken up and washed out spots but I never really managed to connect with anything other than coins, shrapnel, bullets and driving snow. I was only wearing my normal detecting gear and my hands got quite cold just as the sun went so I went home. My last signal as I walked off of the beach was a perfect pound signal (1239 on the CTX) so I was quite surprised when a small silver ring was revealed as the cause. Good sunset though, all oranges and purples.
Today I was better prepared for the cold. I put on another complete windproof layer and two pairs of gloves. The first beach that I visited wasn't right so I moved straight on to another without even detecting. The next beach looked good but was useless and an hour of detecting into the teeth of as gale produced one 20p piece so I ended up back on yesterday's beach. I knew that the tide would go out a lot further today and expose the area where I had a couple of silver rings and lots of shrapnel last time the tide went out that far.
It had certainly been stirred around and the first thing that I noticed were hundreds of sea birds ranging from stoneturners and oyster catchers to gull and terns all shoulder to shoulder along the tideline picking up food driven ashore by the very strong wind. Several of the bolder ones stayed close to me and picked over the holes that I dug for tast morsels. After half an hour of squat diddley I was beginning to think that I had made the wrong call when the small faint signals started to come through at last. They were difficult to hear in the wind but the first was a junk ring from deep in the black sand and came up gleaming like gold, as they do. A few well aimed expletives consigned that one to the junk bag but the very next signal was the large but light 9Ct gold initial ring from about 18 inches down. After that the signals came steadily and deep holes revealed a few more coins and pieces of shrapnel, then another gold ring and then more bits and bobs including a 1930 sixpence. By then the sun was going down and the cold had started to penetrate my gloves so I headed back.
I reached the car just as the moon rose and the first of the streetlights came on. It was obviously a little colder than I expected because my nose had bled at some stage and I really looked like I had been through the wars. Still it wasn't a bad day's detecting at all.
