SPRING DETECTIVAL 2023
A Survival Story
For us Spring Detectival 2023 was the first event in the big rally calendar. Rally season had officially begun and oh was it off to a hell of a start.
We had some quite extreme car trouble in the weeks leading up to Spring Detectival with several rather major problems occurring across two separate vehicles but we pulled it out the bag, secured some emergency transport, and hit the road excited for a lovely spring weekend digging in the Oxfordshire countryside.
It’s British Spring, Winter is over (right?), so we were all hoping for a glorious weekend.
“The weather in the UK during spring is often calm and dry” - The Met Office
Well the Met Office turned out to be wrong, completely, and driving down on the Friday afternoon heading towards Oxfordshire the weather only seemed to be turning more and more biblical. There were certainly certain sections of the road which could only be described as tornado-like, worthy of at least a yellow weather warning. Regardless of this we made it and entered the camping field that was rapidly turning into a swamp as 24 hours of constant rain continued to bombard the site. A total mud bath.
It’s British Spring, Winter is over (right?), so we were all hoping for a glorious weekend.
Parking up to the welcoming and optimistic text of ‘Get ya wellies on!’. We started off with the only thing that seemed sensible and spent 40 mins throwing the gazebo up in the biblical rain to try and create any form of dry space. We opted for the most popular choice in the tent camping area of a double tent situation, putting our tent within our gazebo shelter for two layers of protection from what was quite extreme weather. Our construction was essentially a glorified shanty town, we have certainly both had enough of the pop up tent life, it’s not for us. But with the tent and gazebo double pegged down and gear inside hopefully to stay dry we made the second most sensible decision of the day, accepted it was going to be a feral weekend and went to the bar.
Even though Spring Detectival was meant to be the smaller of the two Detectivals they certainly hadn’t skimped out on the marquee situation, there was plenty of shelter going round in the huge double marquee’s and one of them (the disco tent) even came complete with heaters. Needless to say these were switched right on to max as the evening drew in and the outdoors became muddy, wet and absolutely baltic.
Despite all of this, the torrential rain, the mud that was unlike anything we had ever seen and the cold that started to creep into your bones, Friday night was a blast. There was a great atmosphere around the main arena as everyone simply decided to become drunk mud rats and natter away into the early hours all excited for what the fields would deliver. We were near Watlington after all and everyone has heard of the Watlington Hoard …
Tent and gazebo double pegged down and gear inside hopefully to stay dry we made the second most sensible decision of the day, accepted it was going to be a feral weekend and went to the bar.
We can report that of course we did also sample the food vans, not just the bar (which was excellent), and whilst we were delighted to find our favourite mexican van back in the arena we actually opted for a delicious beef steak stew served with new potatoes and sourdough from the brand new Middle Eastern Tent. This was very much the dish of the evening with a big rush on! We weren’t surprised it was so popular, there’s nothing better than a hearty stew to warm the soul on a bitter and wet April evening. Lucie claims that beef stew saved her life on that night, a Roman Found Dig Scran Rating of 10 / 10.
Waking up Saturday morning with a slightly sore head (no thanks to the travelling bar for that shot of Sambuca) we woke up to silence … the rain had stopped, hallelujah.
Now we do have to admit that we came to Spring Detectival with a secret side mission and that was to infect as many newbies as possible with the digging bug. So here we were early Saturday morning (digging starts at 9!) clutching a bottle of water and a can of coke setting up the nox, the legend and the vanquish ready to supply everyone with all the equipment they needed to get fully addicted. We had a couple of friends joining us from overseas as well as our good friend Tom Ayling from down the road. (Apologies to Kate who had to pick Tom up from the fire pit much later that night clutching his bag of buttons and nails but he's a convert, welcome to the digging life).
Lucie claims that beef stew saved her life on that night, a Roman Found Dig Scran Rating of 10 / 10.
All geared up and ready to go we lead the squad out to field 4, we had done the very important recon over a pint or few last night and sussed out where everyone was the most optimistic (top rally strategy). Field 4 had the Icknield Way running down the side of it, only one of the oldest pathways in Britain, so that’s where we headed.
Swinging our way across this vast pasture we watched reinforcements emerge across the valley as a tractor zoomed in with a huge trailer of straw bales. Whilst we were all out in the fields, Saturday saw one of the most impressive feats of the weekend, the construction of two huge straw roads that stretched the entire length of the field to help people in and out of the camping site, hats off to Team LP.
So this brings us to the land, well so far all that we had seen of the land had been mud, mud and more mud so we mentally prepared ourselves to be practically rolling in the stuff out digging all day. However the ground turned out to be a chalk, flint mixture which retained absolutely no moisture and everyone was wandering round white and dusty, much preferred over wet and muddy even if it was rather hard to dig at times. All 14 of the large fields we had were open from the get go and the absolutely huge abundance of finds from the weekend really just speaks for itself about how good a dig it was. The fields were still producing Sunday even after Saturday’s mega barrage and practically everybody was out all day, knackered in the evening from a full day of it.
Absolutely full of signals the fields were keeping everyone very happy, digging plenty of holes and finding things! We have been at plenty a group dig before where there are those lucky few with a full finds tin but this was not the case at Spring Detectival, practically everybody that we spoke to had found something. We saw gold, romans, hammered, brooches, saxon, silver, you name it it came up at Spring Detectival. Some of our personal favourite finds from other people’s finds tins were Silver Denarii, Fibula Catch Plates, a Gold Guinea Love Token, Sestertius, we could just go on. The land was mega.
Apart from a quick pit stop back at the main arena for a sausage and egg roll and a can of tango (sore head fixed) Saturday was non stop digging. As you do at a group dig we found ourselves chasing the rumours, the Roman rumours. ‘Romans are coming up in Field 13’ is all we need to hear to be straight over, running across acres ready to sniff out a find at 50 paces.
We found ourselves chasing the rumours, the Roman rumours. ‘Romans are coming up in Field 13’ is all we need to hear to be straight over, running across acres ready to sniff out a find at 50 paces.
We hiked round Field 4, 10, 13 and 12 on that first digging day running into some much more seasoned rally goers Si Finds and Chris (Found In The Ground) on our travels. The boys had some very important rally tips for us, always carry beer, make friends with everyone and get some scouts out there to report back on the fields (the source of the Roman rumours). We were incredibly envious when after a particularly steep climb up Field 10 they whacked a beer out, genius, Summer Detectival notes were taken.
We must have dug hundreds of holes and had to be herded out of field 12 by the marshals Saturday afternoon as digging closed too busy pulling up lead medieval tokens to keep an eye on the time. Ellie had also had a role upgrade becoming the dig assistant to two metal detectorists now, running between Lucie and Tom, pinpointer to hand ready to find the target. ‘Over here, Ellie Tom needs assistance, got a signal, Ellie Tom Assistance’. Ellie needs a pay rise or Roman Found needs to buy a second pin pointer. But how can you complain when finding history with friends in such a stunning landscape as was the Oxfordshire Watlington Detectival site even if it was rather hilly compared to Lincolnshire.
Post dig knackered and starting to lose our spines, once again the only sensible decision led to the bar (surprise!) and much more digging gossip was had by the firepit, as well as some show and tell as a stunning Gold Guinea was passed around. We dined Mexican that night going back to our old favourite food van with a hearty burrito to soothe the ails of a 9-6pm digging day and actually got an early night compared to Friday’s evening with a slightly less sore head for Sunday morning. Sunday was tent taking down day after all and it’s always traumatic folding that pop up beast that requires a hymn and a sacrifice to get back into the bag.
We were all encouraged to get our finds recorded there and then and there was a team of FLO’s and Archaeologist types to hand that were beavering away all weekend, recording well over 1000 finds. A super service, we dropped our finds off Sunday morning and headed back into the fields for more! Impressive to see the FLO’s and a detecting rally working so well together as we collected everything all recorded at the end of the day.
As for these finds, well we ended up leaving Detectival with our third ever treasure find and a very full and heavy finds bag. More on these to come … Certainly a weekend to remember and after such an epic couple of days detecting we can’t wait to get our bags packed for Summer Detectival, but one tent lighter this time. In September you can find us in the Glamping Tents.
