Today's survey (our twentieth outing this season) takes us into deepest darkest Lincolnshire to a site we've not visited since June 2016. With no call to the tenant farmer/land manager, we were going blind as we had no idea as to the field conditions down there. At least we had 8hrs 24mins of daylight to play with. The length of daylight is currently stretching to just over three minutes extra per day at the moment increasing to four minutes by mid-March.
After a major motorway diversion we arrived on site at 8am and the ground was frozen over a drilled wheat field. The crop was very short at a couple of inches in length at most.
We decided to use the 9" coils but staying with the GMP Mode with no tweaks and again, Tracking on one machine and Manual GB on the other machine.
The field had been cultivated and drilled without ploughing so it would be interesting to see what has been disturbed since last June.
On that visit last June only about half the field was covered as a summer thunderstorm stopped play. As expected, there were hardly any signals whatsoever in that half of the field showing the efficiency of the coverage in June 2016.
However, the other half of the field that wasn't covered last June produced several signals including several small ferrous targets and lots of lead recovered. Amongst these signals were; five hammered coins, two jettons, two Medieval tokens, a lovely Medieval seal finger ring (impression image included), twenty-nine examples of Medieval buckles, mounts and fittings, a Medieval casket key, a couple of skillet legs as well as seven Medieval lead artefacts and weights.
Non-metallic items recovered included a wild boars' tusk, several Medieval jug handles and pottery sherds as well as one fragment of a Romano-British grit-ware pottery sherd.
As the sun climbed, the ground thawed.... and what a calamity, I don't think that we've encountered such gloopy sticky ground. After clearing several kilo's of mud/clay from the Muck Boots and spades it was only a matter of seconds before the boots and spades were back to square one! It's not often that you see your spade as a spherical mud ball with boots to match.
On the natural history side of things, a flock of pied wagtails were following us about the field and a couple of cattle egrets passed overhead. There's an active badgers sett at the side of the field and there was evidence of them scratching about on the field.
Back at home is sunny Preston, both woodland nest boxes are being scrutinized by great & blue tits with lots of territory calls going on. I'm wondering when the nuthatches will also check out the great tit box!
Back to the human history side of things, we are looking to get out this coming weekend but not sure where yet. It was suggested that a return to the Cruise permissions in Staffordshire may be on the cards. These permissions came about when me and the wife were on a cruise and met THREE landowners on board and they all gave permission to survey their land.
Meanwhile, High Definition images of all the days finds can be seen here.
After a major motorway diversion we arrived on site at 8am and the ground was frozen over a drilled wheat field. The crop was very short at a couple of inches in length at most.
We decided to use the 9" coils but staying with the GMP Mode with no tweaks and again, Tracking on one machine and Manual GB on the other machine.
The field had been cultivated and drilled without ploughing so it would be interesting to see what has been disturbed since last June.
On that visit last June only about half the field was covered as a summer thunderstorm stopped play. As expected, there were hardly any signals whatsoever in that half of the field showing the efficiency of the coverage in June 2016.
However, the other half of the field that wasn't covered last June produced several signals including several small ferrous targets and lots of lead recovered. Amongst these signals were; five hammered coins, two jettons, two Medieval tokens, a lovely Medieval seal finger ring (impression image included), twenty-nine examples of Medieval buckles, mounts and fittings, a Medieval casket key, a couple of skillet legs as well as seven Medieval lead artefacts and weights.
Non-metallic items recovered included a wild boars' tusk, several Medieval jug handles and pottery sherds as well as one fragment of a Romano-British grit-ware pottery sherd.
As the sun climbed, the ground thawed.... and what a calamity, I don't think that we've encountered such gloopy sticky ground. After clearing several kilo's of mud/clay from the Muck Boots and spades it was only a matter of seconds before the boots and spades were back to square one! It's not often that you see your spade as a spherical mud ball with boots to match.
On the natural history side of things, a flock of pied wagtails were following us about the field and a couple of cattle egrets passed overhead. There's an active badgers sett at the side of the field and there was evidence of them scratching about on the field.
Back at home is sunny Preston, both woodland nest boxes are being scrutinized by great & blue tits with lots of territory calls going on. I'm wondering when the nuthatches will also check out the great tit box!
Back to the human history side of things, we are looking to get out this coming weekend but not sure where yet. It was suggested that a return to the Cruise permissions in Staffordshire may be on the cards. These permissions came about when me and the wife were on a cruise and met THREE landowners on board and they all gave permission to survey their land.
Meanwhile, High Definition images of all the days finds can be seen here.
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