Sunday 15th April

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Filed under: Detecting Diary, Training Days — Norfolk Wolf

I reckon that I’ve been pretty fortunate in my life with some of the people that I’ve met; these individuals all seem to have that bit of honest goodness in ‘em. They all add that little bit of feel good factor when they are around that encourages you to think that life ain’t so bad after all. I met up with one such person when he invited me out mettlin’ with him on his fields. I had a phone call out of the blue asking how much I charge for individual tuition. Well when you get that happening for the first time, you tend to think along the lines of a posh bird having an orgasm, “I’ve arrived!” Someone wants me to go mettlin’ with them and is willing to pay, I’ll have some of that. We had to wait for his fields to be ploughed and in the meantime he joined the same forum that I go on. Turns out he hadn’t been in the game long, but reading his posts I gathered he really thought about his detecting.

Anyway, eventually after a phone call and hurried directions from him I said I would meet up at his about 9o’clock. (Yeah, 9 o’clock with a 40 mile drive, I ‘ain’t awake ‘till 10 at the earliest). Honestly, I got to a nearby village, well before then and started asking for directions. You wouldn’t believe it, they must have sent out all the village idiots for their mornings constitutional. Eventually I called in a paper shop and they dragged this woman of about 90 from the back room that put me right.

Three miles further on down some twisty lanes and I got there, yep late as always!

I knocked on the door and this big geezer answered looking like a throwback from the Vikings, not that he, might I add, was wearing one of those double horned helmets, just a big blonde geezer filling the doorway. Introductions over and away we went in my motor to his fields. After only a few minutes we arrived at this whacking great sprawl of imposing Victorian buildings with what looked like a load of penguins perambulating about. On closer inspection these penguins turned out to be a bunch of nuns; we would be mettlin’ on the adjoining land that they owned. Now here’s the funny bit, on the maps this place is designated as a monastery, so what were all those Nuns doing at a monastery early on a Sunday morning? More to the point what was going on here Saturday night? Well for awhile, those thoughts kept me amused.

The field looked good, just been ploughed and rolled; the old adrenalin buzz started pumping. Bob got out his Goldmaxx and started setting up, while I had my customary drink, fag and looking at the lay of the land. “I feel as nervous as when I sat my exams with you watching me” said Bob. “Don’t bother about me” I replied, “I still haven’t mastered the art of putting the detector together properly, I want to see how it’s done”. Bugger, was he nervous. I checked and made slight adjustments to his settings and watched for awhile; he was good, slow level sweeps and methodical.

I rigged up the lower KHz Adventis, thinking it would be good to hit the place with two different frequencies; I couldn’t have been at it for more than 3 or 4 minutes when out popped a cut half. Bob, not to be outdone pulled a whole hammered penny and was really getting into it.

We had got ourselves a busy area, rather than going over each other’s footsteps I took a wander further afield to establish the extent of the area. Stopping for a break after a couple of hours or so, he had pulled a cut half and a cracking medieval key; a big’un with beautiful patination.

We had to vacate that particular field by 12.30 so it was off to another.
“This one has produced Roman, Saxon and medieval in the past”, Bob said. Now we worked and worked that field, really methodical and all that came to light was the odd bit of fairly modern coinage. As regards the Roman, Saxon or medieval we got NUN.
That was good days detecting, not an over-abundance of finds by any means, but the new found company was brilliant to be with.
Did I charge him for the day, bloody right I did!!
(Not really, but it looks better to end the story that way)
Thanks for a great day Bob.
John