A day out in North Wales with dogs and detectors..

Saturday mornings for me usually consist of a 5am get up followed by a hour or two on the computer. This  would then be mixed with a dash of live sky sport if available. At about 7 am i start to cook up a bit of breakfast as my middle son Simon comes around with his dog Roxy. We have a breakfast at about 8am then we often head out with our metal detectors.

This week the weather hasn't been great, so i thought it might be best if we take the detectors out and the dogs as well. If it was raining heavy we could walk the dogs, if it cleared up a bit we could have the dogs with us while we detected. Now the question was where should we go? I had an anchoring to go to the seaside.  I thought that North Wales was about the quickest and the closest. So the Green Meanie (nick name for my Renault Kangoo) was packed with detectors and dogs and off we went. We had 114 miles ahead of us, with what could only be described as threatening sky's all around. We took the M54 then across to Whitchurch, Chester and then Rhyl.

Arriving at 10am we were greeted by a council run car park bereaved of cars. There was only one wretched pay meter which demanded a pound an hour payment, i considered not paying as i could not see a warden being bothered to turn up, the car park was empty. My honesty got the better of me and I paid my pound. The thought went through my mind that the reason there was no one at the seaside was not the shocking weather but because it cost you money to do anything when you are there. A note that local authorities should consider with their pay parking, is when no one comes to your venues, drop the parking fees and they might come.

We had an hour walking up and down the promenade at Prestatyn. This is a nice shore line with a concrete pathway which also acts as a wave breaker. Maintenance on the pathway was somewhat absent. Piles of drifting sand were dotted all over the place. There were no bins anywhere to be seen and the whole thing looked unloved. The beech itself is a pebble beech for about 80%  of what is above the high tide line, with dunes above that. A hour there was plenty for us as the tide was fully in and we could not really let the dogs have a rip.

We moved about 4 miles down the coast to Kinmel Bay which is just East of Towyn. This stretch had a free car park and guess what.....people were there! We let the dogs off for a run on this beech as the tide was rapidly retreating. The wind was coming in off the sea at a rate of knots and would have lifted a well fitting hat clean off your head. There were a bevy of elderly kite surfers limbering up, how they could get into that water, god only knows. The dogs were loving it, Simon was taking photos with his new Nikon1 camera, and i was itching to get the detector out. I finally got the F75se out with about a hour to spare. I wondered if the beech might have been searched on a regular basis? Anyway i detected the dunes with the F75 in JE mode and sensitivity at about 70. This worked well and i found a few coins as well as a few ring pulls and the usual crap that comes from beeches. I moved down to the wet sand and got so much chatter in the headphones i had to rethink the settings. I did the ground balance "grab" then turned the sensitivity down to 45. this worked and i managed to bag a few more coins. Alas the time had come to depart the north coast of Wales and head to gods own country Brownhills.

We took the motorway home and drove through some horrendous rain storms which had thankfully missed us in Wales. The dogs were exhausted and quickly went to sleep in the back of the Green meanie. The trip cost me about £40 in fuel and parking, and i found £1.82 on the beech........why do we do it?