Detectingwales Rally Number 28 - The Rambo Rally!

[Neil]

Today saw us head off over the bridge once again for a chilly, early start somewhere near Bristol. I made the journey with my detecting buddies of many a year, Mark and Staplehead!

An uneventful, but Python inspired journey saw us arrive an hour early to find that at least another 40 diehard DW members had arrived before us! As the morning passed away this grew to around 90 members. So good to see some of the old stalwarts of DW there and equally great to meet lots of new rally goers including: AndyUK, Avalon, Bighoni, Ben Watergent, Da Monkey, Daz, Dave Ha, Faymous, Jassy, Morg123, Ragnar, Sugar and anyone else I may have missed!  

It was a new farm to us, so following the introduction speech, Rob, Geoff and I spent half an hour putting up flags and checking we had the right fields on the map. Whilst wandering we saw a few finds including a nice buckle to Johnus Maximus and a pendent with someones profile on it. Once that was done about 11am the thought of detecting entered our minds.

Most people had disappeared off into the distance on this huge, sprawling farm with numerous field of pasture and stubble to search on. I thought I would concentrate on the empty car park field and joined Rob and Ray & Enid Homer as the only occupants of this field.

It wasn't long until I found a Medieval belt stud, quickly followed by a small part of a Medi buckle. Being a stickler for believing that if you are finding it one area, then dont move, I slowed down amd grided the area and lo and behold I was rewarded in stunning style! The reward was a Shilling of Elizabeth 1st (cross crosslet 1660-1661} 2nd Issue - as confirmed by the 3 recently arrived Finds Liason Officers. To say I was suprised would be an understatement- thats two DW Rallies running I've found big hammered! Long may it last! As a point of interest it was no more than 3 inches under the grass (which had been recently ploughed}. Any machine being used today by any DW member would have found it - I was just lucky.

Finds were soon appearing all over the place with Ademineab having a nice silver Victorian brooch, Tafflaff with some silver off a walking cane, Minelab user with a silver joey, William III coinage, three love tokens and some milled silver.

The next find of note came from Enid and was a Medieval pendent (enamelled coat of arms} I love these items and it should be easy enough to find out who it belonged to . A more modern coat of arms was in Nomads hands and was in the form of a lovely livery button.

Richard of 16.5DD fame decided to join the days finds by turning up a Roman sililiqua - which was a tad battered, but Roman is Roman and he was rightfully happy with it.

I had to cancel my gridding section as news had reached me that Rambo had found something gold. It took me some time to find him and en-route I managed to find myself a half groat of Edward IV! I was pleased as punch. My smile though was not a patch on Rambo's as when I tracked him down he did indeed have gold in the shape of a quarter guinea of George III dated 1762. Well done mate - a beauty of a find and worthy of gracing the pages of any detecting magazine!

Hammered were raining in now all over the place and I lose track of who found what -  so perhaps you can help me in your replies to this post. the one member I know definately had one though was our very own French chef - Nordine (aka Napoleon] It was his first hammered and with typical gaelic style he followed it by immediately finding another one. Rally pleased for you Nap - thoroughly deserved.

Duggie Puggie pulled out a nice horse bit that needs a bit of TLC  and a small cannon ball which is probably linked to the well documented Civil War action in the area.

Missmaggs had found her first hammered coin - I believe of James 1st, but I never got to see it. Does anyone have a photo?

The farmer and his good lady joined us and were amazed at some of the finds. They are a really nice couple and are keen to have us back on the land, so please remember this is a DW farm. Anyone found harassing them for permission will be removed from DW. We don't ever have this problem at DW, but its worth reminding people as we have lots of newbies.

Back to the fields and Staterchaser has a William III sixpence with a mint mark of N - Is that Norwich? Shungav and his clan have a few silvers and a hammered and a William III shilling as well. Great result guys.

The end was drawing to a close and back at the car we counted up 14 hammered coins and about the same amount of milled silver coins that we knew of. It may well be a fair few more as I probably only spoke to about a third of the rally goers. So add to this post whatever you found.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself and a huge thanks as always to Rob, Admin, the Stewards and all the DW family for coming out to play today.

They'll be another one in the very near future.

Cheers
Neil

[Neil]

More

[Neil]

Again

[Neil]

Get comfy

[Neil]

And theres more

[Neil]

Again

[Neil]

Put your feet up - loads more to go!

[Neil]

Again

[Neil]

The Golden Boy himself!

[Neil]

As you can see I took one or two photos!

[Neil]

More

[Neil]

And again

[Neil]

Still more to go

[Neil]

Last ones for now!

[handyman [Alan}]

Thanks for that Neil. A lovely set of pics you will all surely agree. So here goes with the ones i took.