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Steve Rice has been Metal Detecting for over 20 years. He is a member and past chairman of the South Lancs and Cheshire Metal Detecting Club.

Steve will endeavour to keep everyone up to date with his finds (and other members' finds) as well as the hobby in general. He is also a keen Coin Collector and Historian and will keep you upto date with this also.

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King Alfred Metal Detecting Rally - Another view

Posted by ricey on October 4, 2006 12:47 PM | Permalink

You may remember me posting on here on the 3rd Sept about the King Alfred Rally. Here is a view from a fellow detectorist in America called Kev, who has been kind enough to share his views and photographs during his visit.

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Here is a couple of the big tents, where the food was served, bands played and vendors set up their tables.
The gold coloured car, second to the right, was our rental car

I'm not sure how many detectorists were on the field but I would guess between 400 and 500!
There was probably close to 1000 people at the site, many of them camped right there, it was quite the sight!
Here is the start of Saturdays hunt

The first target I dug, seconds after turning on my detector was a large gold coloured coin that had me pretty excited for a bit.
It ended up being a planted token that got me entered in the "gold rush eliminator" round, which was a chance to dig one of 4 or 5 gold coins (I didnt find one )
Heres a pic of a couple of greenies, a bronze Roman and my "gold" coin

A couple more shots of the hunt

Had a few rain showers,but that didnt stop anyone, heres a British detectorist with his umbrella

This pic shows how hilly and big the fields were, this is one of four fields that were detected

There was some great finds made the two days we were there, I wish I took more pics.
2 Bronze age spear points (1500BC), celtic, hammered silver, a roman coin hoard of 60-70 coins, 2 gold coins that I heard about, lots of roman coins and artifacts.
The only 'bad' part was that this site was also a WW2 rifle range and there was a gillion 303 lead and casings, everyone dug tons of these.
My best find from the rally was the Roman Silver Siliqua, minted between 364 and 378 AD (Valens) below

We had a great time, had a blast talking to all the detectorists, eating, drinking, etc. Wish we could of stayed for the last day, but we had to fly out that Monday.
It was an excellent way to end our UK tour and I would recommend taking part in a rally if you have the chance in England.
HH Kevin

One more big pic (check out the old lady in the dress digging the target )