We arrived at one of our fave permissions after passing through some wet weather en-route.
The field we targeted was one where we part-surveyed recently and was drilled with winter wheat.
We also thought we'd have a quick recce on a roughly ploughed field that has a very high chance of having a small villa there.

This time around we found very little in metallic finds but what we did find wasn't too bad with a fragment of a dragonesque brooch, a Roman or Iron Age fitting, three Roman coins and a couple of Medieval strapends.
Six pieces of flint were recovered with two of them being nice blades dating to about 2500 BC.
The first field was very hard going, both in finds and extremely claggy soil that was sticking everywhere!

We decided to pay a visit to a landowner nearby and see if we could gain permission there, so we left one of the team to recce the rough ploughed field  whilst the other two had a jolly and went to see the new contender.
After a short while we managed to track him down, thanks to the assistance of two lovely young ladies that both tried to ringing him to see which part of the farm he was tending.
He appeared in a stable doorway and guardedly asked what we wanted.
Luckily enough, someone that one of the team knows had spoken to him to let him know we may be calling in.
"Ahhh... yes, he mentioned you may drop by, we already have a detectorist that has been coming for years".
We showed him a map of the field and he said that the detectorist had found coins and brooches there.
We asked if we could have the last hour of sunlight there and he said yes.
He gave us his mobile number just in case we needed to contact him.

With that, we jumped back into the truck and drove back to collect Robin from the rough ploughed field at the other permission.
We saw him at the far end of the field and radioed him to come back as we were going to the new permission.
It took for what seemed like forever for Robin to travel across the field back to where we'd parked!
He did however have further evidence of the suspected Roman villa in the form of more tesserae. 

We parked up at the 75-acre stubble field with mixed feelings and as we were tuning the machines we could see Roman grey ware in between the wheat chaff.
Sure enough, the first Roman coin was detected followed by six more along with seventeen fragments of mixed Roman pottery.
There was one fragment of C13th recovered amongst the Roman pottery.
A  William III halfpenny 1697 was also found, so it bodes well for this field as it has already been searched by the other detectorist that also has permission to detect here.

We asked the landowner if it was okay to return next weekend to which he said yes.

We elected to use two 9" HF coils and one 9" standard coil, all set to the GMP mode and, as usual, all the finds were within 4 inches of the field surface with some only millimetres deep.

High Definition images from both dig sites can be seen here and here.
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Back to our latest permission acquired on Christmas Eve, we had the choice of 5 fields with only slight historical evidence in two of them.
Three were in wheat and the other two were seeded with OSR.

Although the weather was dry and overcast, the field was really claggy.
We decided to recce the fields using our tried and tested "Zebra" search technique.
The first field gave up a few fragments of Medieval pottery with the first coin signal being that of a James I half-groat dated to 1603.

The second field was seeded with OSR (Oil Seed Rape) and produced a Roman grot.

The third field was wheat and very quiet apart from one fragment of a C13th jug handle.

The fourth field was also OSR and this too was very quiet with little ferrous and no lead recovered.

The 13" coil and 9" HF coils were used in the standard GMP mode with "Tracking" on the HF and "Manual" on the 13" coil.

Wildlife spotted were; hare, buzzard, kestrel, barn owl, long-tailed tits, fieldfare and redwing to name a few.

​High Definition images of the days finds can be seen here.

We saw the New Year in with the first survey of 2018 with a second visit to our new permission gained on Christmas Eve.
As mentioned in a previous blog, this was going to be a shot in the dark as we hadn't a clue what the exact plan was for the day which is very unusual for us!

The landowner was busy and said he'd come to find us at 10am so we decided to go straight to the target field as we estimated we'd cover the search area by 10am.

We arrived at the field adjacent to the one we looked at on December 28th 2017. This was drilled with wheat and quite short which made it very easy for us to negotiate the 9" standard and 9" HF coils.
The weather was superb with clear blue skies and a very slight breath of wind.

As we searched, a 4-wheel drive gamekeeper style buggy passed us along the lane we were parked on. Sure enough, he came back the other way with food for his sheep on the rear of the buggy. I watched in readiness to gesticulate greetings but he didn't even give us a glance and was probably more interested in his small food load.

A piece of C13th pottery was recovered along with Medieval chafing dish bracket. There were a few bits of lead with lots of ferrous signals but not much else emerged.
We'd completed the small area, as planned during the research stage, so we decided to go and see the landowner to clarify which of the 1300-acres were his.

He came out of the lovely Georgian styled farmhouse with his son who we'd met on the 28th to greet us.
On the wall was a plaque that read: "Take notice that as from today's date poachers will be shot on first sight and if practicable questioned afterwards".

He asked how we'd got on, so we told him of what we'd found and in which field. Would you believe it, he said that's not mine, it's a neighbours! I apologised and he said don't worry, they're all friends of mine around here.
I told him about the chap driving the 4-wheel drive buggy and he said "Yes, that was the landowner". I think he'd already had a word with all his neighbours to watch out for two suspicious guys!

We showed him the maps that we'd printed and he consequently started marking off all the fields that belonged to him. As with some of our other landowners, his land is fragmented and covers a wide area.
He very kindly noted which were his neighbours and even wrote down a mobile number of one of them!
He said that he'd put a good word in for us if we wished with any of his neighbours. We found out that he has contracts on a further 1,900-acres, we're going to need bigger maps!

He did add that he has a couple of guys that come every year but haven't found much.
We bid farewell and then, after all that, we decided to call in at another permission and wish them Happy New Year! 
On the way we passed a field that we suspect that there may be a small villa as we'd recovered a small amount of tesserae, coinage and fibulae last year.
The landowners were very surprised and pleased to see us and invited us in to their farmhouse kitchen.
He said that it was only yesterday that he'd said to his wife "We've not seen our boys for a while!".
We had a good catch-up and asked about the "villa" field to which he said it was ploughed and ready for rolling and drilling.

We asked if it was okay to have a look at a field we'd not been to since April 2016. We could see that they were about to have guests for lunch so we parted company and wished them well.

We'd only got part-way up the track and the Navara slipped to one side resulting in the situation getting worse. We tried all sorts to free the vehicle but it wasn't for climbing out of the holes it was digging for itself!

I text the landowner asking if he could call us after lunch as we were stuck!
This was done as a last resort as we couldn't see any other way of getting out of this one.
He rang 5 minutes later and asked where abouts were we stuck and if we had a rope? 
He turned up in his Discovery but we could see that even that was going to struggle too. Sure enough, it did struggle and with that he said that it requires one of his tractors to pull us out of the soot! (I say soot, but that's another story).

Ten minutes later he turned up with a Claas 620 Arion tractor and heavy duty webbing.
Once hooked up to the tractor, it towed the Navara backwards (and sideways) for about 150 feet to the corner of the field which then meant a tricky manoeuvre to get around the corner and onto the "home straight".
Taking no chances, he towed us all the way to the main track and set us free to carry on with plan "B".

We eventually reached the field on-foot and found it to be drilled with wheat.
Within a couple of minutes, a piece of Samian Ware was recovered from the surface as we made our way to the top of the field.
After a small debate we decided to start detecting and after only two minutes a denarius of Caracalla was recovered.
Some Roman grey ware and a couple of other Roman coins were collected as well as a C17th sword hanger mount, a love-heart, a lead scribe, a lead pot mend and a lead stag.

The sun was now very low on the horizon which meant that we had only a short time to complete the days activities. The light was so dim that a barn owl started hunting around us!
With that, we gave up and elected to go for a chippy tea.

As mentioned, 9" coils, standard GMP mode, tracking on the HF and manual tracking on the 9" standard coil.

High Def images of the days finds can be seen here.