Tuesday, April 9th

This week has become the Battle of the Axes.  Yesterday, Clarence found that little 1400BC - 850BC bronze axe head.  Today, he found a partial copper alloy socketed axe head, also 850BC.  Not to be outdone, Mindy made a visual find of a stunning and huge hand napped flint axe head dated to 11000BC.  It's beautiful and you can just image it being used all those years ago. How can I compete with those two?  I did manage to find a couple of Roman bronze coins (1st to 4th Century), one of which had a nice image still remaining.  Amazing these have been in that field for 2000 years.

Tonight's entry is a little different because we were having too much fun at dinner tonight. I let everyone else get away before I wrote down their best finds of the day.  We were having a good time with our new Aussie team members and learned some Aussie words today. Peter asked for a biro earlier today none of us knew what he wanted.  So..our Aussie vocabulary word of the day is...biro...definition...a pen to write with.  A generic term for any common writing instrument with ink.  We can always learn something new, even on holiday. We were also celebrating tonight because Lynn's suitcase, which left Perth, Australia with them but failed to arrive in London on Saturday, was finally delivered here this evening.  She has been wearing borrowed clothes and boots and is really happy to finally have her own things. 

Pictures of our finds are now appearing on the club website.  To see them, go to www.colchestermetaldetecting.co.uk , click on Finds, click on March II.  Now scroll to the bottom of the page where the newest entries are added.  Our finds (from our group) start with the Large C8th Century Saxon Mount which is a rectangular piece with cut out of a lion.  From then to the bottom of the page, you will see finds made by our group of seven. There are some pretty amazing items and more are added each day as they can be photographed and identified.

It is now 10:30 and everyone else has gone to bed. I need to run downstairs and check on our laundry before I go to bed myself.  English washers and dryers are quite different from what we are accustomed to.  We use "speed wash" which runs a load in about 45 minutes.  A normal cycle is twice that long. The dryer will take close to two hours and you need to periodically empty the tray in the bottom where the water accumulates, otherwise, the clothes will never dry. 

More tomorrow...............