Necrophilia amongst the Saxons? Nah, turned out to be pants.

No Comments

Filed under: Detecting Diary, Fireman Bob — Norfolk Wolf

Go on admit it, the headline grabbed you didn’t it? I had better explain that this is the latest of the Fireman Bob episodes and it will all unfold as the story is told.
We revisited the outskirts of our site that we had been working in the past and had a few more bits and pieces, but the undergrowth was becoming more and more arduous to work, so fresh areas were needed.

A few more Roman and Celtic from our old site. (as we have nothing else any good to show this time)

We did try one that was very close to a known Saxon settlement that looked as though it might be promising. However after hours of fruitless search, the only highlight of the day was when Bob dug down near the roots of an ancient oak tree and made what could possibly be a break-through in Archaeological terms!
Silver paper was a real bane to begin with, but eventually he got to grips with the slight “chop” at the end of each signal and recognised them for what they were. A really sweet high tone got his attention and he went into battle against the root system of this old oak tree. I’ll say one thing fer Bob, he don’t hold back when there’s a glimmer of something good waiting for him! Sweat and curses flew in equal amounts; from where I was standing he looked fer all the world like a big ol’ badger a diggin’ out his set. Eventually, an eight or nine inch bomb crater was formed and he brought his new found trophy to see the light of day. Triumph turned to disgust as he threw a shiny ring-pull away with all his might. (Naughty, naughty, not the best of detecting practises).
I couldn’t resist it. “Blimey Bob, yer shouldn’t ha’ done that, yer might hev made an archaeoligicum breakthrough there”. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Well think about it, look how deep that was, stands to reason it can’t be modern now, cannit?” “Just cos’ the brainy bunch from the museums ain’t ever found one so far, doesn’t mean it ain’t possible that them there Saxons din’t like a swig o’ coke themselves back then does it?” “Yer better go look fer it an’ find it again, it could turn out to be a priceless artefact, definitely well worth taking up to the museum I’d say.”
Sad to say, he declined; these youngsters just don’t want to learn these days do they?
That folks was the sum total of a whole days detecting, just goes to show that not every site is going to be a chicken dinner. (A winner)
“So where we going this week?” Said Bob’s voice down the phone. “Well I keep looking at this interesting area that I pass on the way to our site that might be worth a go, can’t be any worse than the last episode” “It’s just north of the river and rises up quite sharply and looks flat at the top; a big area of it has had the trees pulled up, just right for a bit of easy detecting for a change. There are plenty of woods to the side and beyond it, if it turns out to be duff.”
Friday saw me and Bob climbing up a steep track (fer those people who says we ain’t got hills in Norfolk, try climbing this bugger a couple of times, yer’ll soon change yer mind). When we eventually reached the top, I was ready fer a break, which was lucky otherwise we might have missed a plinth that had this plaque attached describing the area. Evidently it was used as a rabbit warren in former times and more importantly before that somewhere in the vicinity was a Saxon burial site! Valhalla, Nirvana, call it what you like, but Bob was definitely going to have some of it. Already he was thinking of Cruciform brooches, sceattas, broad flan coinage and anything else them there Saxon’s had.
To me a Saxon burial site means one thing, SSSI (site of special scientific interest). Definitely a no go area, but where the hell was it? It wasn’t shown on any of our maps or other documentation of the area that we had, so what were we to do? Give it a bloody go! The burials can’t cover that much area and for them to know it was a burial site excavations must have taken place. First signs of anything dead and we move on.
I hate to say this, especially on an archaeologically sensitive site, but we found absolutely loads!
Loads of bullets, more bullets and even more bullets till we were fed up to the back-teeth of finding the buggers. Every good signal, a ***** bullet!
No wonder there was a grave site there; they must have shot the buggers fer target practice!
Turned out to be a Second World War rifle range; 303’s, blanks, you name it, they fired it.
One interesting thing came to light though; Bob’s Goldmaxx Power gave a good signal on all of them. However the Adventis, gave a good signal in Disc 1 (minimum), but Disc 2 (minimum) gave a slightly chopped signal. One up fer the Adventis, boys!

You should see Bob’s lot!!
We decided to have our obligatory break to give us a bit of time to work out what to do next. The obvious choice was to get out of the firing range of those pesky bullets, so it was a case of heading up to the higher ground and give the woods a try.

Christ where’s He taking me next? Not more bullets?

Christ, I didn’t know that those bullets could travel that far, up-hill an’ all! I weren’t too bad with the Adventis, but Bob was still a swearin’ even after a quarter of a mile or so. Eventually we moved out of bullet range and into ———– cartridge country! When it’s not your day, it’s not your day. Did we wave the white flag and give up? What us? Not on yer Nelly, matey! (Just goes to show that even the best of us can deliver up a big slice of bone-headedness)
The undergrowth was pretty bad and made it really heavy going, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that no-one ever decided to live there. Signals (apart from cartridges) were non existent, no iron even,” nuffink” at all. Until that is, I got me a “good-un”. If I describe the signal as “Sweet”, it does it a disservice; it was like nectar to my lug-holes. It was worth running the coil over it a few times to remind myself what a good signal sounded like; pure manna from heaven. (Come on, you would wax lyrical too, if you had to put up with all what we had to!) Deep? Cor, I’d say it was; the blinkin’ roots didn’t help either, but there was no way this little beauty was going to be left.
What person in their right mind buries a tin-can a couple of foot down in the ground? This was the second time that I fell for it in the past two months. If I ever catch up with the geezer that’s doing this, I’ll blinkin’ marmalize him!!

not another one!
Time for a final cuppa and then detect slowly over a wooded section that lead back to the cars.
The next bit is the first time that I have ever encountered this in all my years of detecting; I hope it will be the last. Bob had wandered off doing his own thing, when I came across an area strewn with Porno books, some with pages torn from them. The place was that littered, it looked like a tip; you had to be wary of where you were a steppin’. To top it all off, there was this women’s pair of panties nailed to a tree, honest, I kid you not. I was that gob-smacked I took a photo.
What ever people want to get up to in their own time is their business, but I definitely don’t want to detect there afterwards. I switched off my detector and got the hell out of there, Bob didn’t believe it when I told him, he did when I showed him the photo and here it is.

Now can you understand the title?
John Lynn