Beach treasure hunting

The wife is always having fads; new interests that may or may not last.  There's been the rats (which have been and gone), the rabbits (which are looked after mainly by grandma), playing the guitar (which seems to have stopped), the language degree (which is still going), karate (which is still going), netball (ditto), running (ditto).  Okay, perhaps fads isn't the right word.  Hobbies is perhaps better.  I normally try not to start new hobbies as I'm too busy with work and children.  If I had the time I'd spend it getting better on the guitar.

Anyway.  With the storms, the beach has changed quite a bit.  The sand dunes have been sliced into so they're now sand cliffs.  Parts of the beach that have been covered up for ages have been uncovered.  Various items have been washed up onto the beach.  The strangest I've seen are clumps of goose barnacles, which are a valuable delicacy in Northern Spain.  If they were still alive they'd be worth hundreds of pounds.  This got me wondering what else may have been uncovered.  A metal detector came to mind.  I know that there is money on the beach as one of our guests found quite a bit last year for only short metal detecting trips to the beach.  I wondered what else might be there.

Permit
You need a permit to do metal detecting on the beach.  The bit between high and low tide belongs to the Crown.  Whilst they encourage use of the beach, they still want people to realize that it is their land and should be treated as such.  You have to sign a declaration to the effect that any major finds would be handed in which seems reasonable enough.  You can keep small amounts of modern coins though.  The permit can be obtained from here and is a simple procedure.  I made sure I had the permit before I bought a detector, however, it seems to be a simple administrative procedure so I needn't have been concerned about not getting one.

Cost
Metal detectors seemed to be quite cheap, you can pick one up for £20.  I thought that it might not be very good so was prepared to spend up to £100 to get what I thought would be a good one.  A quick look on Amazon and the most expensive seemed to be £250.  Then I started reading up on them which is when things got disheartening.  I found this site which listed beach detectors.  I checked the prices, £495 to over £1000.  At that rate I'd have to find a lot of treasure to make it pay for itself.  It wasn't worth it.  Also, you can't just use any old metal detector on the beach, it has to be a beach metal detector.  Land detectors would be set off all the time by various minerals and magnetic sand on the beach.  I wasn't going to risk getting a standard one, it would have to be a beach one or nothing.  Eventually after finding information in forums I found the C-Scope CS4Pi beach metal detector for around £260.  The £250 detector on Amazon had a fancy control panel with an LCD display telling you what you'd found plus other bells and whistles.  The CS4PI had two knobs and that was it!  The best deal I could find was from http://cscopedetectors.com/cs4pi.php at £265 including batteries (which were already installed when I received it), headphones (which help with battery life) and search head cover (already installed).  It took a few days to arrive from Northern Ireland.

Digging
You need something to dig up the ground when something is found.  Looking through forums and websites you could pay a lot of money for something to dig the ground.  As I was digging the beach I didn't think I'd need a "JCB on steroids" as one item was described.  I could use our large selection of plastic spades.  I did think I'd need some kind of sifter.  A metal one would just go rusty really quickly so it would have to be plastic.  I settled on a "heavy duty plastic sifter" from Mighty Oak Trading for £7.97.  When it arrived it turned out it was originally from Maplin who sold it at £4.99 but is now discontinued.  No matter, it was still a lot cheaper than prices that other places were charging.  Some sellers on eBay were asking £30 for the same item.

Children
It didn't take much persuading to get the children to come along.  "Would you like to come on the beach and search for treasure?"  I had the two youngest with me.  Unfortunately their idea of searching for treasure was to settle down and dig and make sand castles.  However, it did leave me to get on with it whilst they played.

Treasure
Today was the first real outing with the detector.  I think we were out for about 2 hours.  In that time we found a coat hanger, a disposable BBQ, nails, screws, a lighter, several tent pegs, 3 beer cans, a pound coin, a five pence piece and a penny.  The girls wanted a share of the coins so one had the 5p and the other had the 1p leaving the £1 for me.  They aren't that bothered about the value at the moment so I got away with it.  I decided that it would be a good idea to put the rubbish items in a bag and remove them from the beach.  Firstly because I wouldn't have to find them again, and secondly it was making the beach tidier.

Of course whilst searching for metal treasure I found quite a few intact sea shells which I added to my treasure collection.