Mudlarking on the Thames with CUT/HALF and HAMMERRHOID

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Today we set off at 3 am ( too early for me ) to do a spot of mudlarking. It was our first time so we were quite excited to see what it would be like. We packed the car with pretty much everything including trowels, sieves. buckets, spades and a whole lot of other pointless stuff. Right back to the journey, we were set to make it to London for 5:30 am and we were beating time until we came into London, where it took us an hour to get from Staines to our mudlarking destination in Bermondsey ( Central London ) . Every road in London seemed to be blocked, so the satnav was well worth it's value today as without it we would have probably been still going round London now. Anyway we made it, we parked up at 5:50am and met up with our mudlarking buddies. At this time it was still dark and the thames was right in, but the views of London all lit up were amazing. We were not too far away from Tower bridge, The Shard, Cheesegrater and the Gerkin. At 6:30 am it was just starting to get light and the tide was going out, so we made our way down the ramp and took our first ever steps on the Thames foreshore. Me and HAMMERRHOID were doing eyes only with a trowel and sieve, but our mates were using metal detectors. We knew we would have about 4 hours until the tide would be in again. Back to the mudlarking, as the thames was still going out at this point, new things were appearing every minute. There was lots of bits of clay pipes and old glass at this point and not much else. After about an hour the metal started appearing this included lots of nails, pins and iron however still scraping away I found a coin ( think it is a george 111 farthing ) followed by a cloth seal, bag seal, buttons and a few tudor hat pins. About 2 hours in I met up with HAMMERRHOID who had unearthed a lovely little coin weight ( still researching ), a few buttons, some fancy glass and some other bits and bobs.     It was 8:30am and by this time there was many people searching the shore, we spoke to quite a few and they had found many coins, thimbles, complete clay pipes and artefacts. Our mates were finding it hard going, but in the end they did retrieve some interesting items. Time was fast approaching 9:20am and suddenly the tide started to turn again, It came in about 30 minutes and as we hadn't found much in the last hour we decided to say goodbye to the foreshore and get packed for the journey back ( we were not looking forward to it much ). It took us another hour to get through the centre, but after that it was a breeze and we got home safe and sound. Overall it was a brilliant day and I urge everyone to try mudlarking, you never know what you might find! Thanks for reading this very long article.

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[Dryland]

Glad you both had a good day, I've fancied doing it for a while, Were the detectorists finding  more than eyes only ?  

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