DetectingWales.com

Hi All,
           just thought that I would introduce myself. I'm Chris, a 67 year old, retired Aviation Security Officer; married with two grown up kids who have flown the nest. When I retired we started spending a lot of time down on the North Wales coast.

           Having always had a general interest in metal detecting, I decided to buy a decent detector for beach work on wet and dry sand. I eventually plumped for the C-Scope CS4PI and have been detecting the beaches at Talacre, Barkby, and Rhyl. I don't think that I am ever going to get rich at this game, but for me it is all about the thrill of the chase and not the kill!

          I must say that I have been amazed by the rubbish, broken glass, and scrap iron that I find at Talacre. During my first season there, I picked up over 10kg of sharp, broken, nasty glass, between the lighthouse and the tern colony. Oh and several hypodermic needles.

                                                Chris    :)
          

welcome aboard m8  ;)

HI CHRISTOPHER !!
wellcome to detectingwales mate.

Thanks for the warm welcome chaps; I hope to be sticking around for a long time, God willing!

                                  Chris

big welcome to you Chris

Thanks Wayno. any tips for Talacre?

hello chris welcome to the dw forum enjoy

Thanks Deadlock; still feeling my way round.

            Chris

just watch for the needles on all of them beachs m8, deadly !!!!!!

Talacre is pants.  :(

When I first started I hit it hard for months and if I were collecting iron I'd have been well chuffed but came out with a grand total of around £3 for my efforts! Still, it was an experience if nothing else..

Thanks Jmhammered, the needles that I found at Talacre turned up on the high tide line amongst the flotsam. I always try to have a small sharps box with me. As well as detecting, I signed up with Keep Wales Tidy and they issued me with some cleaning kit.

                                 Chris

              Hi Dusty. The scrap at Talacre is unbelievable. Rhyl is better, and Barkby is clean by comparison. I thought that, perhaps, a rally at Talacre would be a good idea. £10 pound a head entry fee, devide the beach up like a fishing competition, recover all targets, then split the kitty 50/50. Half to go to the person whose name was drawn from a hat, and half to go to RNLI. A day that gave the most daylight hours between high tides would be chosen.

              We would remove tons of scrap, get a good name for detecting, and show HRH Prince Charles that we detectorist do a good job on Crown Beaches. Maybe HRH would then let us detect on his beaches for free.

              The Keep Wales Tidy team, and the Flintshire Coastal Rangers, are doing a clean up at Talacre on Friday, March 16th and I'm going to run the idea by them and see what they think of it.

                                          Chris

                                                   

             

im sure there are a lot better places to hold a rally, than there ,good effort but really a scrap heap of a place

You are right JM, but because the place is so full of scrap and nasty sharp objects, I thought that it would serve well for our purpose of high profiling the good that detectorists do for the Crown Beaches. No individual would profit from the funds and perhaps the caravan sites would be intereted in becoming involved.

                                        Chris

A very good idea, never looked at it from that point of view, I see were your coming from ,put my name down as a starter Chris if you can get a few more all the better ,
         cheers John

hello

Hi  ;D

Hi JM,  I spent most of yesterday down at Talacre on the dunes cleanup, and removed some 25Kg of broken glass and bottles from the sands. Initially I had intended taking my CS4PI down with me and doing some detecting on the beach later, but decided not to. Didn't need the detector; I turned up loads of stuff on the beach by site only.  :D

Bumped into an RNLI manager by one of the Narcon Pillboxes and had a long chat about running an MD rally at Talacre and he has given me a contact at Pool Dorset.

                                      Will keep you posted on any progress.

                                                            Chris

the dunes are a protected area, do not detect  on them m8 .

Hi JM; read my lips...................I do not detect in the dunes; only on the beach. The work that I do in the dunes is supervised by the Keep Wales Tidy Team, or the Flintshire Coastal Rangers.

                        Chris  :)

never said you were going to detect there !!!!!!,do you know why they are protected m8,

Hi JM. As I understand it; one reason is to protect the habitat of the toads there. Darn toads make an awfull mess on the bottoms of yer boots!    ::)
Do you know of any special reasons; other than the toads?

                                               Chris

hello chris welcome aboard mate :).mike

thanks for info Chris did not know that cheers John

Hi Chris
Sand dunes, by their very nature, are fragile. The grasses that grow on them can easily be disturbed and thats the only thing that holds them together. Just walking over them can disturb the roots. Apart from the grasses, which only grow there, other plants, insects and small animals make a home there and nowhere else.
One thing that confuses me is why they say they are protected and Holiday Makers climb all over them with no regard and no control. If you're seen detecting there by a warden you'll be told off, or worse. Fair or what ??

Val

val these dunes are fenced off with warning signs,someone sees a toad oh dear lets stop anyone walking over ,crazy world we live in

Hi Val, John; that all sounds about right but there are other mysteries to do with Talacre.  Put Viking Burial Ship and Talacre into your search engine and see what you come up with; I have chased that one for a while!  Also the high tide line and the foot of the dunes were protected by a barbed wire entanglement and mine fields during WW2!

There are thousands and thousands of 303 projectiles both in the dunes and on the beach. Each projectile contains a mixture of lead and antimony to give it more clout. Mmmmm, lead!, isn't that an environmental problem; the darn stuff is toxic.


                                          Chris

bloody hell Chris think il stay well clear  ;D

Taint that bad John; you just don't slam the spade hard into the sand Anny more!   :D  Oh; and stay away from the quicksand.   :P

what news on the saxon viking stories

Hi John,
                sadly I have lost the scent on that one. Did you look up Viking Burial Ship and Talacre on the internet? I am hoping to spend a lot of time down there this season and will do some research into the area.

               On Friday I turned up an odd piece of scrap on the beach; it looked like one of those spikes off a wrought iron fence. When I showed it to my daughter she said  " point off a pikestaff ". Me, I think that it is too short and not pointed enough. I will post a picture later this week.

                                                   Chris

Hi Chris I live in Gwespyr on the hill above Talacre, it was a viking burial that was found in the 1930s. They found it while digging a septic tank for a bungalow in Tanlan(on the coast road  towards Ffynnongroyw) . If I remember rightly there was a skeleton and a spearhead found. Hope this helps.

Hi Dungbeetle,
                         I had got that far after visiting Rhyl library and consulting with one of the librarians. Me thinks that it is a case of Chinese whispers! Someone says they have found a Viking Burial, and then someone thinks " Aaaah, Vikings were buried in their ships. "     And Bingo; it suddenly becomes a Viking Burial Ship. Unless we are missing something.

                                                              Chris

PS, there is a lot of work going on at Talcre just now. Diggers and dumpers working in the dunes. Also tipper lorries importing sand!   ::)

I  have lived here all my life and only heard  about it in a local history evening class but last year I found a piece of a Cnut short cross penny not too far away(it's with the FLO at the moment) so vikings were in the area.

They sometimes have history lectures in the comunity centre at Talacre.


                                          Chris

Hi
Might be able to help you with this

The Viking grave was found when my wife's great grandfather was building the row of semis at Tan Lan

Her grandmother always said it was in the garden of their house ( the Elms ) and was moved to Liverpool museum where it was destroyed in ww2 bombing

                          Hey Ho; perhaps it was cursed.  :o

                          Didn't spent a lot of time at Talacre last year, but have been try my hand on the more westerly beaches. Will probably put some time in at Talacre this year but will try to plan things a bit better. Sadly, parking at Talacre is a bit of a bugger these days.  >:(