Today we held the third Rally for Detectingwales.com and returned to Caerleon - home of the Romans! It also turned out to be the home of suspect devices!
The day started early with the troops being massed before 9am. It was good to see lots of new eager newbies including Big Chris, MelonHead, Beepy, and the lovely OzzyHead to name but a few.
After the usual heres where you can go and heres where you can't go speech, geoff mentioned that he had buried 12 tokens which if found rewarded the finder with an Easter Egg! After that everyone was off with a flurry of swinging machines and stamping on spades.
It didn't take long though until I was summoned to a hole dug by Detector Dave. I had noticed him in the distance and wondered what he had been digging as he had been there for quite sometime. I got to be honest when he called me over, I was expecting him to show me a Roman or a nice Medieval find, but no he couldn't do that! Instead he treated me to the sight of something that for all the World looked like an unexploded World War II bomb
. My heart rate definately quickened a beat to say the least. Luckily two of our members (who I am afraid I can not name for fear of Military Police knocking my door) work in ordanance (bomb making to you and I). They took one look and were of the same opinion its an unexploded bomb.
Crickey - thats a first for a DetectingWales rally!I promptly called the Police who were a bit startled to say the least, and I could hear the telephone operator shouting to whoever would listen
"They think they've found a bomb and theres about 40 people in a field near it!" They told me to put an exclusion area of a 100 metres around the device and then
"Mark the area with a flag and get you deriere out of there!" I obliged and with the help of a few members shifted everyone well away from the area. The farmer was driving past when I was on the phone, so I told him and he replied that he had two mates visiting him for his birthday who also worked in the Munitions Factory (how strange - 4 bomb experts at one Rally!) What a birthday present for the farmer!
Anyway to cut a very long story short, whilst waiting with DetectorDave a good 100 metres away for the Police to arrive I was next startled to see the farmer driving across the field towards the device with his two "Bomb expert" buddies! I joined them at the site they took one look and both were of the opinion that it sure as Hell looked like an unexploded bomb to them! One of them then proceeded to try and clean the bomb with his Swiss Army knife - it was a struggle to make him stop as he was keen as mustard to difuse it himself!
Two bemused members of Newports finest eventually arrived, agreed with us that it looked well dodgy - one of them can be quoted as saying "Oh sugar" when he leaned over, looked at it and promptly started walking backwards. With their help we cleared the entire field and they told everyone to turn off their mobiles (although I believe the Nazis were not thinking of mobile signals when they made their bombs in the 1940's, but my better judgement told me not to mention this.)
They rang the Bomb Squad in Hereford who eventually arrived took one look and thought the same as everyone else and retired to their wagon for the most technical tools available to man - which turned out to be a
pick and shovels! 
I was in another field while they excavated "the bomb" only to find out from Geoff we had all been wrong and it was in fact a feeding trough from a cowshed! What that was doing in the middle of a field is anyones guess.
Anyway panic over - back to the fields which were turning out loads of signals, just nothing much of any historical interest! The oldest coin until right at the end was a 1700-s George III penny, a cartwheel penny and an interesting bell shaped thing found by Casa Dos. Then right at the end the Find of the Day surfaced, once again to Ancient Pat. It was a hamered silver coin of Elizabeth dated 1582. Well done Pat!
As for the token hunt only 2 were found and as TaffLaff said
" What chance have we got of finding anything old if we cant even find twelve tokens that were planted this morning!"The day was over and it was an eventful time even if the finds were a bit on the sparse side. Well done to Rob for getting the farm, Geoff for arranging it and DetectorDave for scaring the life out of me!
Theres another Rally coming soon, but if anyone wants to pitch in with land for a DetectingWales.com rally just let Geoff or I know.
I'm having a well earned G&T and resting my shattered feet - what a day.
Thanks everyone
Neil
