Discovery Tours

In 2018 Bill S donated an Anglo Saxon strirrup mount to the Castle Museum. This year we arranged for Bill to see what had become of his donation! It is now part of the ‘Viking: Rediscover the Legend’ exhibition that was on at the Castle and is now touring the rest of the UK.

The morphing of an artefact

Initially the above find was identified as a strapend but after sending it to our small finds expert for further assessment it was re-identified as a 17th C component  of a heavyweight scale! Once the finder, Ed S, was reunited with the find he gave it a good clean and in Ed’s words ‘The incised framing lines "dissolved" in the soak and the center of the piece swung out like the blade of a pocketknife.’

After some research of his own, Ed discovered it was a

 ‘tumbrel’ . See the Portable Antiquities page and Ed’s picture below

https://finds.org.uk/counties/findsrecordingguides/tumbrels/

Well done Ed on your research - a great discovery!

We have had some sad news -

Gus D that many of you will have known, passed away after a short illness.

Gus was a Gentle Giant! His mind was an encyclopaedia of military history.
He had been detecting with Discovery Tours many times over the years and the detecting hobby gave him a special focus in life.

We were informed about Gus by his good friend Tracy M. Tracy met Gus on our tours and had kept in touch with him as they lived in the same area.  Tracy kept in contact with him lifting his spirits right until the end.

Very sad but to end with a smile - Gus found his first gold coin on a Discovery Tours trip and was very excited, when we asked where he had found it to record the exact location. He pointed to another field next to the one we were in. Whoops, that field was owned by another landowner, we did not have permission to detect on there! No gold coins were found on the field we were on, so it was a good call Gus!

 Gus was also the first to instigate Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches in the lunches delivered to our detecting site! As many of you may know PB&J’s are not a UK speciality so was not on our menu of sandwiches! At that time our good friends, Geoff & Sylvia, made the lunches each day to bring to the site and one day Gus asked if they would make him a PB&J sandwich for the following day. This they did and once the word got round what Gus was having for lunch half group requested the same! So they became a permanent fixture on the lunch menu thanks to Gus!