metal detecting Rally near Cirencester.

I thought i might blog my recent adventures at a open rally near to Cirencester. This might give you some insight into how a rally occurs and how one prepares for the day.

I returned from my holiday on Saturday 1st of September with a huge appetite for getting out with my detector. My first port of call was to trawl through the Metaldetectingforums.co.uk web site. There is a section in there where forthcoming Rallies are often posted. My eye was immediately taken by a rally being organised in Cirencester. It was short notice, but i began finding contact details of the organiser, and investigating the validity of the dig. This didn't take to long as some of the forum members were going to the same rally.
I emailed the organiser and requested a place for the Sunday. The organiser responded to me with an email  confirming that i could attend . With this email came the address of the farm where the rally was being held.
It was a weekend rally with campers turning up on the Friday for a early start on the Saturday.

On the Saturday evening i thought i might ask a few of the attendee's via the forum how it had gone. I was informed that one of the fields had turned up a lot of Roman coinage as well as a Celtic stater and a few brooches. All of the other fields had not turned up many finds. However, as most weekend rally's do, there were fresh fields for the Sunday.

I spent Saturday evening going through my check list, as driving 85 miles and realising you have forgot something is not a great idea. Batteries were charged, shovel and detectors loaded. Sandwiches were prepared and drinks at the ready. I loaded the address into the sat nav and hit the sack.

Sunday morning came and i departed at 7am. The journey down the M5 is fairly easy at that time of the day. i arrived on site at 8.30am and bright sunny morning awaiting. The registration tent was easy to find, and attended by two extremely polite young ladies. They took my £20.00 and handed me maps and information leaflets.

field 7, my first destination.

car park.

looking across to the village. The largest field being behind the houses.

I met a couple of familiar faces and got into a bit of banter about metal detecting. We decided which fields we would head to and got our stuff together. We all gathered around the organiser who gave a brief talk, in which he stated that the field where all of the finds had come, had a section which was out of bounds. All detectorists were to stay out of the said area which was demarcated by stones.

I thought i might give that field a miss as it would be heaving with detectorists again. I always think that the grass is greener on the other side so headed for one of the new fields. The field i chose gave up a few buttons and a bronze gold gilded ring. There was obviously a dearth of Roman finds, so i decided to move on. it was back down the beautiful country lane and to the largest of the new fields.

I had two hours on field 12 which only threw up a few modern-ish finds. I began to think that i had better try the Roman field (26) or i would regret it the next day. One of the guys showed me a silver roman brooch which was absolutely stunning, and i don't say that lightly.

Field 26 was beginning to look like the Somme, with pot holes everywhere. There were at least 25 detectorists on there still finding things. I had an hour on there and found little, so i moved on to the field below it. Here i found another bronze finger ring showing some gold gilding, and  at last a Roman coin. The coin was unmistakably a Roman, but with no recognizable markings on it.

This was the field below 26, field 26 was above the hedge at top.

I stayed on the fields around 26 for the remainder of the day. At about 4 pm i decided to call it a day as i had a 2 hour journey back home and my legs were hurting like mad. I showed the FLO my finds and noticed that the Silver Brooch i had looked at earlier was now on display in the FLO's case. I do wonder how long it will be before the guy who found it will see it again, if ever? It's definitely a floor in the process of declaring ones finds. The FLO's and their hierarchy can't turn these finds around quick enough. This will inevitably cause some of the finds to go below the radar.

All in all a good day out and i would recommend.