Weekend Wanderers Easter Rally 2017

The rally location was close to the river Ouse in Northamptonshire near the villages of Deanshanger and Wicken. Both of these are recorded in the Domesday Book and have Anglo-Saxon origins, so it all looked set to be a very interesting event.

- Andrew Coombs

Upon arrival, I was greeted by many happy faces and a good map of the location, showing all the fields. Several people had already set up their tents and caravans on the Thursday, and the whole thing could only be described as being very organised and laced with an air of excitement. The dig got underway on the Friday morning and I headed over to field No.1.

Wow, what a shocker! I have never searched on any soil like it before. My machine went into overdrive, bombarded with the amount of iron and general mineralisation under the coil. This was indeed time to put into practice some of the skills I have been learning, but until now never had the sites to warrant using them.

One interesting point I found really useful was reading the ground by comparing visual aspects to the audio responses. During the walk across the field, the terrain looked very average with short crops just showing; but as I walked up a slight bank I was able to clearly see a lot of stone lying on the surface in one area. As I walked through the stony patch the low tone iron audio went into hyper mode and as the stones decreased so accordingly did the iron response intensity.

I thought “Could this be the footprint from an old building or possibly an enclosure?” It was difficult to determine precisely, but it made me think about another article I had previously read, but never had the opportunity to utilise – until today of course.

After that initial observation I started noticing strange stones everywhere. This was indeed a very interesting site, but the targets were playing hide and seek with the erratic ground conditions.