Today's survey was planned to cover two areas we've already had a look at and possibly two totally new areas of which we've never detected before.
The bonus being we had the luxury of a lie-in due to the fact that we had 10 hours 37 minutes of daylight to play with as opposed to the 7 hours 27 minutes we had in December last year!

We arrived at the first field which is a really odd shape, 40 acres in size and drilled with winter wheat.
The first area produced a few Medieval artefacts and one hammered coin whilst the other area produced several Roman coins and pottery. The latter we covered when it was first drilled last year so it would be interesting to see what else turned up this time around.
Apart from some Medieval pottery dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, nothing of note was recovered.
We moved to the Roman "shrine" area in the same field which was quite small, covering about 10,000sq ft. On the way there a 1791 Hull half-penny was found featuring William III on horseback.
New pottery sherds were evident on the surface which gave us confidence in finding more Roman coinage there. A huge fragment of a grey ware base sherd was lying on the surface which must have had a thin layer of soil covering it as it was too large a piece to miss. The rainfall since last year had obviously helped to reveal this lovey piece of Roman history.
We recovered another 10 Roman grots which was good considering we gridded the area last time around.
​We tried all sorts of settings to see if this made any difference. Zero discrimination, Reactivity at zero, 18khz, large coil, small coil, etc etc. When we located a Roman coin signal (these usually registered between 61 - 71) we reset the Déus to standard GMP and went over the target area again, it made no difference whatsoever!
Admittedly, these targets are extremely small signals due to the small coin size and metal content. 

Lunch-time beckoned so we headed back to base and agreed to look at the new areas nearby.
We elected to use the "Zebra" method on the new areas. This is our version of the "Union Jack" method used by some on a new field. A full explanation of the "Zebra" principal can be read here.
We also decided to use the large coils to cover as much ground as we could  on this was a recce.

The first field to undergo the Zebra search pattern is a 44-acre field drilled with winter wheat which was quite advanced at 6 inches in length. The first signal was a Roman grot then it was fairly quiet after that with just a few bits of lead coming up. We'd Zebra'd the lower half of the field last year with no finds of any significance being found.
With this, we moved to the adjacent field which is a little smaller at 28-acres and also drilled with winter wheat but the crop was much shorter. We carried on using the Zebra method and the tractor tracks that I was following produced a few buttons, lead and green waste but surprisingly some Roman grey ware sherds were on the surface.
Rob's track (24 meters away) shared the same results but his line also produced an Irish penny of Edward Ist. I leap-frogged Rob to start on the next set of tracks whereas Rob elected to tighten up his search pattern using our normal linear search technique. More Roman pottery with a few sherds of Medieval came up on Robs line so I joined him and carried on alongside him.
Thirteen more Roman coins, including a nice example of a coin of Allectus, were retrieved, as well as three Roman fibulae.

With the light fading and the threat of rain coming in, we decided to call it a day.

High definition images of the day's finds can be seen here.

Today's venture saw us revisit two adjacent sites.
The first site was seeded with winter wheat and was as flat as a pancake.
The last visit in 2015 saw several hammered coins and artefacts recovered but on the recent visit on January 29th, a much smaller amount of finds were evident. We thought that it may have been a "quiet" side of the field. This however was not the case; only two hammered coins and a small amount of items came to light.
We realised that the reason for this was that the ground had only been cultivated and only a few inches of the surface disturbed.

Once again we saw that if a field that had only been cultivated or directly drilled, this resulted in at least a 75% drop in finds.
It will be very interesting to see if this field is ploughed at the end of the year and if so, what the results will be then.
We decided that any further time spent on this field would not be worth the effort we apply, so with that we moved to the permission next door.

We kept the same set-up with the 13" coils and standard GMP mode.
The wheat in this field was now well advanced and to such a degree that any surface finds were difficult to see. Another aspect was that is was also increasingly difficult to move the 13" coils against the wheat.

Again, we moved to another field and found three more fragments of the stone loom weights that we've found at this permission but never before in this field. Currently, no-one can give us a definitive answer as to the age or use for these stone relics. We are still trying to bottom these and solve this enigma.
We'd surveyed this field when it was first drilled last year but didn't manage to complete it.

We then moved to a field that was in a state of readiness for drilling and was surprisingly flat in parts. The soil was quite soft and fluffy so probably didn't help in the depth argument. A nice Roman coin and fibula fragment were recovered.
We called it a day and our thoughts settled on where we might be on our next outing.

We recovered 3 Roman coins, a C1st fibula fragment, a James VI Half Thistle Merk, a Charles Ist Scottish Twenty-Pence, a nice neck section of a Bellarmine jug, a Medieval floor tile fragment, three fragments of those stone relics we can't get an answer to and other miscellaneous items. 

​High Def images can be seen here.

With the threat of severe weather in the eastern half of England and rain in the south as well, it was decided we head north to Cumbria.
We arrived in a blizzard!!!....So sat it out hoping for a break in the weather.
Fortunately the weather did break and we quickly donned our waterproofs and geared up for a stint on a site that is predominantly Roman with a Medieval twist to it.
The choice of weapons today were the 13" x 11" coils set at GMP standard, one "Tracking" and the other manual GB.

The first field we looked at was one still in stubble and as we started, the wind picked up and the sky darkened. Luckily the waterproofs and layers kept the cold at bay to a certain degree. Lots of lead came up with some pieces being very large.
A dupondius and a couple of Roman grots were recovered along with a couple of Georgian coins.
An odd sight presented itself with a blue tit lying dead in the field which evidently came to grief very recently as rigamortis hadn't quite set in. Perhaps a victim of the high winds and an unfortunate collision with a nearby tree branch?
Lunch was calling so we shut down and thought a return to the field which produced a Henry III groat and a denarius a while ago might be a good bet.

We only had about a fifth of the field to complete, so the the remaining time we had left would be enough to cover it.
More lead emerged, again with some very large pieces showing.
Two nice and unusual strapends/belt mounts, one of them quite rare in having the leather still attached after several hundred years! Also, two hammered coins, a Medieval purse bar, a skillet piece, a whirligig and a piece of Saxon pottery were recovered. The hammered coins came up five minutes apart towards the end of the day, one at 16:45 and the other at 16:50!

High Definition Images of the days recoveries can be seen here.

​

A Break from the norm saw the PAST venture into Shropshire for a change of scenery. This was a site a acquired by a chance meeting with three farmers on a cruise in 2013.
The soil here is very sandy and extremely easy to dig with none of the problems of gloopy soil sticking to the spades, pointers, boots and trowels!

We had been "warned" by the landowner that a club had been on the land a few times since we were last there. Indeed, other detectorists too had been there as well. This justifies and qualifies what we have said in the past that we never ask a landowner to refuse other detectorists access to their land.

The first field surveyed was in stubble and there was clear evidence that "others" had been there. With large ferrous objects and non-desirable items left next to the holes that they were extracted from, it was obvious that their finds bags were already full.

We heard the first great spotted woodpecker of 2017 drumming from two different points. 

​We decided to have an early break and see the landowner for an update on the past visits from other detectorists and clubs.
After a lovely cup of tea they asked us to continue our survey and report back when we were finished. 

After finding a hammered coin of Edward Ist (London Mint), spindle whorls and other coins we returned to the farmhouse for a second round of tea.
We had a great rapport recollecting the cruise and other holidays around the world. Our recommendations of holidays in Sorrento and Madrid went down really well.
Other discussions recounted everything from internet speeds and possible resolutions to the choice of 4x4 vehicles.

The conversation ended with the landowner suggesting we look at a farm nearby and that he would contact the landowner and vouch for us. This permission could represent a totally different approach to the surveys that we normally conduct with regards to artefact targeting. Indeed, it could be the closest we've been to coin-shooting in a long while.
If this permission is granted, the results could be pretty spectacular.
Fingers crossed that this may happen as this would be a great challenge for the team.

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