With wet weather threatening our East of Britain sites our choice for today was the West Country. We decided to return to Cumbria to carry on from exactly where we left off on the 13th October.
A cool northerly breeze kept the temperature down to 9C but the views were spectacular with the snow-capped mountains of the Lake District in the background.
With large coils attached and the usual standard GMP mode with manual GB tracking on one and "auto" on the second machine, we started from the precise spot where we finished in October.
The field is seeded with winter barley and the soil extremely sandy which is superb to dig.
The first signal after just two minutes was a sestertius in poor conditions at a depth of eight inches. This seemed to be a great start but expectations soon dropped as several shotgun cartridge caps and even more coke pieces took the place of good artefacts and coins. On the positive side, these were coming up from impressive depths with some of the caps retrieved from ten inches!
We were met by local historical expert Cedric Bell who has written several articles on the Roman occupation of Cumbria with emphasis on the Roman canals and harbours as well as the Chinese labourer's encamped there. The Chinese were used to build parts of Hadrian's Wall and were highly experienced in mining.
Cedric has travelled to New Zealand and Nova Scotia tracking the Chinese Junks that have travelled here and to many other continents.
An wide mix of coinage was recovered with a nice denarius of Geta and coins of Queen Elizabeth I, William II, George II, George III, Victoria coming to light. One Medieval buckle and two lead net weights were also recovered.
Images of the day can be seen here.
A cool northerly breeze kept the temperature down to 9C but the views were spectacular with the snow-capped mountains of the Lake District in the background.
With large coils attached and the usual standard GMP mode with manual GB tracking on one and "auto" on the second machine, we started from the precise spot where we finished in October.
The field is seeded with winter barley and the soil extremely sandy which is superb to dig.
The first signal after just two minutes was a sestertius in poor conditions at a depth of eight inches. This seemed to be a great start but expectations soon dropped as several shotgun cartridge caps and even more coke pieces took the place of good artefacts and coins. On the positive side, these were coming up from impressive depths with some of the caps retrieved from ten inches!
We were met by local historical expert Cedric Bell who has written several articles on the Roman occupation of Cumbria with emphasis on the Roman canals and harbours as well as the Chinese labourer's encamped there. The Chinese were used to build parts of Hadrian's Wall and were highly experienced in mining.
Cedric has travelled to New Zealand and Nova Scotia tracking the Chinese Junks that have travelled here and to many other continents.
An wide mix of coinage was recovered with a nice denarius of Geta and coins of Queen Elizabeth I, William II, George II, George III, Victoria coming to light. One Medieval buckle and two lead net weights were also recovered.
Images of the day can be seen here.
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