A random wander

Yesterday I decided to detect up the line of the old road, as close as I could get to it.

My hypothesis with this permission has always been that people in the past were no different from modern motorists and were happy to chuck rubbish out of their cart along the road side as they passed; but also that travellers in times past, moving as they did on foot, horseback or by cart, were much more likely to stop by the roadside or pull off for a rest, so there should be random lost or thrown-away stuff along the old road margins to be found. Nice idea, eh?

Needless to say it didn’t work out that way. I detected right along the edge of the road, up gently rising ground to the field boundary, beyond which lay a belt of trees and an open hill top. And found absolutely nothing except a couple of shotgun cartridges. Not a broken button, not even other rubbish. What’s going on, eh?

Out of curiosity I peered looked down through the foliage into the hollow way that was the old road. Bloody hell! At this point it was at least 10 feet deep, steep-sided and as dark as Hades down there. Talk about a place for an ambush! There wasn’t a cat in Hell’s chance of any traveller pulling off onto the roadside to rest his sweaty feet in the sun. Here be Dragons!

My hypothesis duly kyboshed, I spent a while detecting around the slopes of the hill. The ground was more highly mineralised in this area, the soil was rather heavy clay and the few holes I dug produced the odd piece of rubbish and bits of charcoal. Just charcoal, though. No brick, tile, glass or other evidence of habitation, and the few clumps of nettles nearby were up the slope from where I was digging.

For the last hour I made my way down the slope and across a flat part of the field. This produced a broken copper alloy buckle and what appears to be the remains of a hinge. The latter is not magnetic (according to my trusty fridge magnet) though there are traces of rust in a few places. I suppose I could throw it away, but that would make me unhinged.

Finds: 1 broken buckle and 1 broken hinge

First trip out with the Deus

I took the Deus down to my permission this morning to give it a bit of fresh air. Although I had detected Field 1 fairly thoroughly over the past 12 months I thought it worth seeing what the Deus made of the same area. Would it find all the goodies that the ADX 150 must have been missing? It seemed a good idea to have another good swing over the bottom third of the field, the area which 12 months ago produced a broken fibula, a broken Roman knife and a medival horse harness fitting.

I started off on Basic 1 and then tried the GMP programme. Three hours later, and I have nothing to show for the effort. The Deus has not found anything which the ADX 150 missed, and I’m frankly gobsmacked. I went back and forth across the bottom of the field parallel to the old hollow way. I tried a few random passes up and down from the hollow way to about a third of the way up the field and back again. Nowt. Bugger all. This can’t be right. Am I missing faint signals because I don’t have the headphones yet?

I retired in confusion.