Rainy day project...

[SAbottles]

A very much younger SAbottles down a typical hole. I'm only standing on the actual layer now; we had to move 6ft of white dune sand each time to get to it!

 

[SAbottles]

After an hour or so. Made a mistake by leaving bottles next to the hole; some of the locals saw these and when I came back next morning the whole section next to my hole had been blitzed!!

 

[SAbottles]

This is a shot of what came from that particular hole. When you found a good area there would be a veritable trove waiting. Note the colour still in my beard as opposed to the earlier shot with the blue bottles !! sigh!

 

[JOETHECROW]

Dale,...great digging pics and story,...what a great bunch of bottles! Looks like they were pretty deep under that sand, as far as older pics go, I must have some around somewhere....Time waits for none of us, but perhaps we improve with age?[]

 

[SAbottles]

Hmm! That may go for some wines, but I don't think I could move as much dirt in one day as I used to! I like your thread on the old farm dump and can relate to digging in that sort of mud. Part of that Drift Sands dump was pretty swampy and I can well remember digging for 5 minutes and bailing out for 10! On one occasion I remember a pot lid falling out of the side wall and disappearing with a Plop! Fortunately some mad probing and sifting with the fork brought it to the surface.
Some of the guys I dug with in the UK used garden forks with lots of close set tines with blobs welded onto the end. They sifted these through the mud and came up with some pretty good things. This was right on the edge of a soccer field, which was getting progressively smaller as they dug ! I remember them joking that by mid-season the teams would be playing with 5 a side !![]

 

[JOETHECROW]

Laughing,....[] Dale,....we have a term for those devils that try to get away,..."bobbers"...When we were at that dump yesterday, Fred joked that he saw one doing the backstroke, trying to get out of our field ov vision....

 

[SAbottles]

Amazing how shy those bottles are; reading in other threads about how they can sense if you have brought a box to load them in & so they burrow deeper!
Talking of digging near water, I take my hat off to these diggers who dig the mud banks of the Thames in London. They cover over their hole with sheets of plywood weighed down with poles, then come back after the tide has gone out, bail the water out & go on digging! And the mud they dig has the consistency of wet cement! I contacted Tony, the chap benmding over the bucket, and bought a batch of lovely clay pipes to take back to SA.

 

[SAbottles]

These were the pipes, some of which I found myself by wandering along on the mud flats and looking very carefully. The four figurals and the three centered by the yellow mouthpiece I bought. All sold like wildfire at my stall!

 

[SAbottles]

These diggers dig under licence from the Museum of London, who have first claim on anything really historic they may find. But wow, digging on a site that has nearly 2000 years of history !

 

[cobaltbot]

SA you have a great collection that reflects a lifetime of passionate digging, thanks for sharing. I love the mudlarking website, it takes a little while to load but is great! Here in the states we get excited, and rightly so from anything from the late 1700's to early 1800's. Mudlarking website:

http://www.thamesandfield.co.uk/