[Sundae]

There's nothin gin my parents' yard. My niece and nephew did a Big Dig squre there a while back. Big TV thing where people were encouraged to dig 1m x 1m x 1m on their land. My sister flatly refused to have it done in her garden (fair enough I suppose) but agreed when Mum offered.

The big finds always seem to be on farmland or in the grounds of huge houses - valuable land has always been valuable. The ground they built council estates on in the 60s was cheap for a reason.

Fascinating topic though. I still intend to do a Thames Beachcombing walk one of these days. You can bet your life I'll document it for you

Thames Beachcombing

The Beachcombing walks are "special" in every way. (And I'm speaking from first hand experience...because I've been on three or four of them myself. Talk about a busman's holiday!) Let me count the ways. First of all: wonderful guide. Which is always - always - the most important factor. The foreshore - the "beachcombing" - walks are guided by Mike W. He's the former Museum of London Marine Archaeologist, so - needless to say - he really knows his stuff. But he's the rest of the package too. He's a really nice guy - warm, friendly, enthusiastic, great with kids...the whole kit and caboodle.

What do you do on a Beachcombing walk? Well, there are several elements. Mike often kicks off with fascinating stuff on marine wildlife. And needless to say, he knows where to look and what to look for. So you see critters! And some of their life stories - the Thames eel for example - are, well, just extraordinary. Theirs is a biography that almost beggars belief: they start out in the Sargasso sea - tiny little thread-like creatures - make their way across the Atlantic, up the Thames, do what they have to do - by this time they're a good size - picture a couple of feet or so of a garden hose and you'll get the idea - and then, well, it's time to turn round and head back across the Atlantic, head home to die (providing, that is, they don't get sidetracked - so to speak - into a Cockney eel and pie establishment)...well, you'll get my drift.

Then after fin, feather, fur, fauna, scale, etc. he will usually move on to the human "footprint" on the foreshore. Some of it small enough that you can pick up, examine, put in your pocket, take home and put on your mantlepiece (or, in the case of the mediaeval roof tiles - use for candle holders!). Some of it way too big to take home. Revetments, foundations, supports, fragments of quays...that sort of thing. Stuff that you and I almost certainly wouldn't even notice...or if we did notice we wouldn't have a clue what is was for, how old it was, etc.