We weren't out detecting this weekend but all was not lost as it was a chance to kick-off the adder spotting season.

The weather wasn't the best for adders as it was overcast but quite bright with the sun threatening to poke through.
Unfortunately, this area is now quite well known and we could see four people scouring the area looking for adders. What was concerning was that at least two of the group had "handy reachers" which look like litter picking implements. Why on earth would they have these upon them?

We steered clear of where this group was and concentrated on areas where we had seen adders before.
We managed to spot two females trying their best to absorb as much warmth as they could.

We decided to search an area 1km to the east of our first search area.
Another female was located and her eye's were "milky" showing that she was about to slough.

Back to where we'd parked, we decided to look at an area near to a stream as the sun had now decided to shine seeing that we were going home!
This was rewarded by spotting another two female adders sunning it.
Again, one of these was about to shed her skin.
All the adders seen today had a very flattened posture so to as absorb as much heat as possible.
It was very strange that we didn't see any male adders at all!?!?!

Hopefully the male imbalance may be sorted on our next outing?

High Definition images of today's search can be seen here.

Today saw us visit two new fields that have been detected before by other detectorists so we weren't too sure if we were going to find too much there.

The weather was quite mild and overcast with no wind.
Winter wheat was the crop in the first field we had a look at, being quite short it gave us great visibility of the surface helping us to collect 38 fragments of Roman and Medieval pottery (639 grams).
The first piece was actually a fragment of Samian Ware which quickly raised our expectations, but this was a false start.
Oddly enough, no more pottery came from this field although 2 Roman coins were recovered.
Part of what appears to be a Medieval key with ring and dot impressions apparent on both flanks of the bit came up.
Even more oddly, we found 23 golf balls lying on the surface too!

Rob went off to track down the landowner and identify which fields belonged to him and to extract any info about the other detectorists that visit.
He said that they seem to search a certain part of the field next door but they have a much greater interest in the field adjacent to that one.

We paid a visit to the field "next door" and that was in winter wheat too, we tracked across the field to the area of interest was, as pointed out by the landowner.
Sure enough, we started to recover more pieces of the familiar Roman orange and grey ware pottery dating to the C3rd and with that, the Roman grots also appeared. In all, 20 Roman coins were recovered including a bilon unit.
A fragment of a terret ring, a lead pot mend, 2 fibulae, a lead scribe and a Minié bullet where the other metallic finds on the day.
Medieval artefacts were also in the mix with one being a cut-half of Henry III and the other a swivel.

One 13" coil and two 9" HF coils were used in the standard GMP mode using tracking on one of the HF machines and the standard 90 on the others.
Most finds came from within 5 inches of the field surface with some Roman coins actually on the surface.

I saw my first swallow of the year with a bonus red kite soaring overhead and a great spotted woodpecker calling from the woodland nearby.
Amongst many others, yellow-hammers, wrens, robins, song thrush, blackbird, goldfinches, buzzards, dunnocks, ​​pied wagtail and skylarks added to the cacophony of bird song.

High Definition images of then days' recoveries can be seen here.

Our last report was from the outing we had on 25th February 2018!
This was due to the terrible weather that the whole of Britain has suffered.
This has delayed the spring drilling so the season may be artificially extended and may impact on our fishing season!

In between times I got married at our favourite café, Northcote Manor.
What a great day, finishing off with a stay-over in one of their top rooms (thank you to the generosity of one our neighbours) and a chance to sample their Michelin-starred breakfast!
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​Here we are 5 weeks later with a write-up on 4 different sites on two different dates.
There were only minor differences between the machine set-ups with the standard GMP mode utilised between a mix of coils.
The coils used were 13" x 11", 9" standard and the 9" HF coils.
Each performed equally without prejudice.

Site 1 (March 24th)
We gained permission to this new site with a stern warning from the landowner that the field we were going to survey had been "heavily walked over during the past 10 years". 
Sure enough, we didn't find anything recordable except for the Medieval pottery that the past detectorists had left behind.
We decided to move on to site 2.

Site 2 (March 24th)
We gained this permission back in September 2017 but have never had the chance to visit. This again has been detected heavily over the years and probably one of the reasons why we haven't felt the urgent need to visit.
Seeing as it was only minutes away from site 1 we thought we'd call in and see if we could detect there.
We could see that there were 2 tractors ploughing a nearby field and I tried to ring the landowner. There was no reply so he was obviously in one of the tractors. I then sent a text to which he answered 10 minutes later and said "go for it".

We arrived at a field we'd researched in 2017 and it was in stubble.
The soil was excellent to dig and with that we started to recover bits of lead which was encouraging.
A cut-half was the very first find with a Georgian fob seal coming next.
The seal matrix looks to be Georgian with the seal plate still showing a gold plate covering.

Site 3 (April 1st)
We gained permission from a Council to detect land adjacent to an abbey. 
After four-and-a-half hours searching (13.5 hours total) we decided to call it a day. We recovered the expected Victorian coinage but nowhere near the quantity that we expected.
Nothing pre-dating the Victorian period was discovered which just shows that although the site is ancient, nothing Medieval was within detecting range.

Site 4 (April 1st)
This site was in a state of stubble and had been covered by a rally a few years ago and a local detectorist more recently.
Finding fragments of lead and pieces of Medieval pottery was encouraging and the first notable find was a Scottish hammered coin of Alexander III.
Some lovely Medieval artefacts emerged along with half groat of James Ist.
The next signal resulted in a cracking Anglo-Saxon brooch that looks to date to the C6th. 
A hammered penny of Edward Ist and another half groat, this time it was a Charles Ist, emerged.

To view the High Definition images of the days recoveries please click here.
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