Metal Detecting The Beach Yesterday.

Well would you believe it, I had all day to myself yesterday,  the rain and gales had subsided, in fact all the factors for a good full days detecting were in place. So I made the most of this opportunity and headed for Slapton Sands to try my luck. I arrived around 8am and there was already one chap on the beach detecting away. Was hoping the beach was more stripped of sand after all the gales...I say sand, its more a shingle beach. In fact I was sure there was more shingle piled up on the top of the beach than there was last time I was here. The beach itself is quite steep so there is not much distance from the top dry down to the low water mark. I set my Velox up and for a good 90% of the day I was running it on full sensitivity, Iron Disc at FS, ground balance at 6. I kept the Iron off, Signal Audio on 2 and in Mineral Mode 3. This was not the quietest of settings, but I had good depth and those dig-able signals could be heard loud and clear through the chattering and odd falsing.

First pic above was my total finds for the day. The top row of coins are all decimal, a £1, a 50p piece, 4x20p, a large old 10p and a newer one, 2x5p, 1x2p, 7x1p and 7 halfpennies.
The next row of coins are pre-decimal. 4 pennies, 5 halfpennies, 3 thrupenny bits and 6 sixpences.
Also a foreign coin I believe to be an American one cent.
Also there are a few fishing weights and buttons.

These are the 6 sixpences I found. Ranging from 1940 - 1960. Not very good condition but always nice to find an old Tanner.

I also love finding these old Thrupenny Bits. Maybe because they remind me of my young days as one of these used to be my pocket money for the week in the late 50s.

Here's the foreign coin i found. Pretty worn and hard to see a date. Sure its an American One cent.


There were no low spots to be found, all those targets came from a lot of walking around. I found hardly anything on the top dry, all my finds came from the damp and the wet right up to the waters edge. I remember detecting this end of the beach before and all the coins I found were decimal, so seeing those pre-decimal coins turning up shows the storms have churned up the beach, nature's plow as we say.

I never did get to bump into the other detectorist there as he headed off towards the other end of the beach, so don't know if he found much, also one more detectorist arrived as I was more or less leaving, hope they both did well.
All in all a very enjoyable day with plenty of digging which I love. With another storm on its way tonight certainly will be worth another visit to a beach this week.