Well, we've finally concluded negotiations with one of our new landowners!
The document they sent would provide a full nights reading for sure.
The Estate has several farms upon it and the one we're interested in has a fair bit of land. All we have to do now is sort out which farm is which after our initial sortie.
We've just found out that a university are busy carrying out archaeological surveys on other parts of the Estate. We need to talk to the university to avoid any clashes of interest or, indeed, suss out what they are surveying.
The farm we're looking at has a major Roman road running through it with copious amounts of recorded archaeology there. One particular field appears to have a large building in situ that could be a Roman villa. The last time I thought I'd found a Roman villa it turned out to be a C12th - C14th lost village with Saxon burials!
This permission will be ready in September.
Glass of Wine Anyone?
The second bit of news comes from my wine supplier. He asked, just out of the blue, did I metal detect in a certain part of the country? The places he mentioned are areas we've already checked out but detectorists are kept at arms length.
"Of course we do" I said .... his parents live there and his friends own the exact area we know that has an IA or RB settlement there. He's invited us over for a chat but obviously "can't promise anything" as they are a "funny breed" there! Ironically, we have more Roman sites than medieval. We are truly trying to redress the balance.
It just goes to show... you never know where your next permission may come from!
Do you remember the story of the three farmers on our cruise?
Anyway... we've now got to sort out this coming Sunday......
Paul King