After spending so many weeks in a warm country surrounded by gorgeous beaches, I dreaded the fact that I had to dress in several layers again before I could go treasure hunting. I had to consider shoes, pants, leg warmers, socks and all that stuff.. Once I got fully dressed, I took my Xp deus out into my garden.. only to realize that it was unbelievably chatty and annoying ! It did not stop beeping ! So I got quite angry, and went back inside to fiddle again with all settings and headphones.
I only own the little XP Deus controller that comes with the WS3 headphones. Since I like to have direct access to the menu without taking the headphones off, I use the unit attached with my own headphones with the help of a separate adapter with input jack. I tape the whole thing onto my XP shaft with simple tape. So that had to be taken off again..
When all seemed to have turned into normal sounds again, I went out in the afternoon and decided to go to the closest spot on my list: a grassy area near a bunch of houses where local kids can play. It’s quite out of sight of streets, and only a few houses are high enough so that people could see me from their window. But I tried not to care.
The results of Day 1 My first find was a 1-euro coin, so that started out well ! I had times when I came home with less than 5 cents.. I told myself to start digging lower Id’s in order to increase the change of finding jewellery.. but then my pinpointer gave up after 5 minutes ! So I did what I always did: dig up coin numbers. A lot of low ID’s showed but I ignored them, as it’s very hard to find their exact location with only a detector and a screw driver. I ended up with 3.30 euro and a led bullet. Not bad. I also dug up a toy car but I put it near the bench for someone to find it someday in better weather circumstances. I also noticed some very sharp pieces of glass lying under the big toything, so I took that away. Overal, I was quite content to have dug up this much without a pinpointer. The next time might be more of a failure..
My biggest problem with metal detecting is that I am not good at getting permissions of land owners. In Belgium, or at least the Flanders area, you need an owner’s permission to search their property. Also, you are not allowed to go in certain areas which have historical value. I happen to live in the oldest city of the country and that also adds up to the problem. We don’t know exactly where the protected area ends. Lol huh.
In the past years I got into some situations and managed to ask 3 farmers, plus got permission to search on their field. If these fields would have turned out to be godly pastures of roman bronze and gold, I wouldn’t be complaining this much. Of course I found absolutely nothing there while I spent days and days trying to turn my permission into solid silver and bronze. So the need for more fields came back and this time, I did not have any guts left to go and actively contact farmers.
Working around that
To avoid the private land problem and to start finding more stuff at the same time, I started searching in public areas like playgrounds and parks to strike some contemporary coins and jewellery. I did not find lots of jewellery, maybe because I only dig above certain IDs. The amount of coins worked out quite well. Within 2-3 months, I had almost 100 euro in dirty eurocoins (the money sucks, really, if this is material that they base the EU on, it really won’t last long and THEY know it !!). They often have a grey/black color and shops won’t take them, so I exchanged money with my mum and she would spend them in parking machines (which I try to avoid because they are from hell).
I do have a slight problem with the system and authority and stuff. Never got in any trouble though, as I’m a total chicken shit.
So that was the story of last year.
This year I did a few fields together with a top detectorist who always finds amazing Roman things. Me however, I didn’t find anything except a 700-yr old very thin silver coin which broke in two. After that, again no fields.. Most detectorists go without any permissions and they never get into trouble, but I’m just not taking that risk.
My most recent trip to the warm beaches
In the last couple of months, I have spent some months living at the Adriatic Coast, which is splendid.. Awesome times I had, going to one of several beaches on my own. The tourist season was over, beaches were almost empty but the weather was still great. Just the sight of the water, sand and big cliffs would make my day worthwhile. Of course, finding silver and gold jewellery made the day even more splendid. On the first day, I took an assistant-digger because I was afraid that detecting would be prohibited-but two more detectorists where there too.. We found 2 gold wedding rings and 2 silver rings. That was amazing !
After that, the maximum finds where limited to one golden ring a day (not evry day lol), and/or a couple of silver rings or a silver bracelet. After several weeks of detecting at the dry and wet sand, I had a total of: – 4 golden 14k wedding bands – 9 silver rings – 4 silver bracelets, two earrings and a catholic pendant – 100 euro in coins – over 100 foreign coins or coins from the old currency (The foreign/old coins showed up in way higher quantity than the euro, eventhough the euro IS the currency over there. I don’t really understand why, but anyway.)
Back.. And now the black hole
Unfortunately, I had to return to Belgium and as soon as I set foot in this grey and cold country, I felt the good old boredom coming up again.
I spend my day behind my computer, looking up info on metaldetecting and looking at awesome finds in Youtube.
All day, it goes like this in my mind: ‘I want to go detecting, I also want to find gold and cool stuff !’ But then I have plenty of excuses why not to go..like – the weather is horrible (it really is, though) – I don’t want to walk around in 3 layers of clothing and look like a psycho nutcase – I am afraid that people will tell me to go away..
The weather I can’t change, so that’s just something I have to be patient about.. I guess I won’t look thàt weird. I went to detect many times in parks where people came with little children, and I NEVER had any negative remarks or anyone asking me what the hell I was doing there. So from there on, I told myself I have to get over my fear and go out again !
So I made a challenge for myself to go out every day to detect in parks or wherever.
Here is where I will keep you informed of my progress..
