Challenging Cornish Sands

[Pav]

Have been out and about during the storms as travels dictate. Locally I have collected some WW2 artillary and on a shingle backed beach a collection of worn coins which included some pre decimal.

However my ventures into Cornwall are disappointing. Newquay area, 3 beaches! Each beach disappointed me although looked promising each time. The sands just seem soooo deep, even when I can see obvious cuts from rivers or tide.

The same is true for me at Sennen which I have detected a few times now.

Why am I finding Cornish beaches so challenging?

[Christoph1945]

Because HRH Prince Charles has hidden all the best finds!

[east coast stu]

If the conditions are wrong, you will always struggle even with the best equipment. The other factor is often that you just dont have enough Local knowledge or ability to spot the areas that need working, Winter Beachcombing takes years of practice to really understand. Spend more time loking at the beach from a high vantage point before walking onto the beach, once you know the areas worth a look, try them and move on if they dont produce. Also worth trying smaller beachs, if you visit the well known busy areas everybody who owns a detector has probably been there before, Less popular beachs wont ever get finds lost at the same rate, But they often get very few detectorists

[Dirtypaws]

Was down at Sennen myself a couple of weeks ago and also at Portreath and Porthtowan - very little to show for it other than a few recent coins, one silver ring and, oddly, a 1921 Italian coin and 1927 French coin (both in excellent condition and no more than 10ft apart). Found it hard going, as I have on previous visits and also at Praa Sands despite these all being very busy beaches.

Have only been able to get to these beaches when the tide has been in or mostly in, so was mainly on the dry sand or had just a little bit of wet to look at so it was hard to get an idea of what was going on. However, where I was I found a lot of the sand to be quite coarse and like you say, very deep. Also, not having a sand scoop the wet was hard to dig as the holes infilled almost instantly.

Got the impression lost items probably disappear into this sand pretty quickly and haven't found the hotspots yet. Also, I believe from a couple of people I was talking to that the beaches are pretty thoroughly hoovered by the locals during the season so many of the fresh losses are probably recovered before they disappear into the depths. I'd be on one of those beaches every evening if I lived near enough.