Mmmmm...

One of the things I miss most living abroad. What could be nicer than a pint of real ale and a pub lunch in the garden of a tranquil country pub next to a small river. This was the Bathurst Arms at North Cerney near Cirencester which always seems to offer a good choice of real ales.

During the entire lunch that followed, was watched as what looked like two-seat open top vintage sports cars emerged from a lane opposite, stopped at the main road, crossed it, then disappeared up the lane next to the pub. It seemed like there were a couple of dozen of them.

After the meal we left up the same lane that the cars had gone up. After a few miles we passed a farm shop and signs for a rally in the adjacent field. Assuming it was the cars' rally and as my mother was curious to visit the farm shop we stopped.

It turned out that the rally was nothing to do with the cars, but was a rally of metal detectorists, doing their thing in several nearby fields. They had some tables out, on which they were displaying their finds for the day. We had quite a long and interesting chat with them. They had found a good number of articles, some of them Roman, which is not surprising given the proximity to Cirencester, Roman Corinium Dobunnorum.

If I were in the U.K. I would be very tempted to take up the hobby myself, but in Spain my guess is that the law is more restrictive.