Winter is on the Doorstep

With King Winter on the doorstep it has been less tempting with any outdoor activities. Since my last write-up it rained like crazy, and if it didn`t rain it was frosty and way to cold to play around in the dirt with nitril- and rubber clad fingers.

Just when I began to think the season had ended, Monday arrived with exellent weather.

The Girlfriend and I decided it was time for another roadtrip to get some nice views and to do a little recce for next season to a site where it supposedly had been a POW camp and a nearby soldier camp.

It was a beautiful drive in the morning. It was only +5 Celsius, but the sun would warm things up a little as the day progressed.

We found the place easily and after a short walk into a wonderfull forest we saw earthen walls from several buildings, stoves made from fuel barrells and other metal sticking out from the ground.

The metal detector gave off signals all over the place, but a lot were poor signals like from rusted food tins, nails and wires etc.

I opened a few better signals and found several bits of scraps from trench-art production.

I dug up a rifle cleaning kit, and in what seemed to be a long dumping ditch I picked up "Forest Lego" as Girlfriend called it, a broken coffee cup with Heer eagle. I tried to find all the pieces so that I could glue it back together later.

Then we moved a kilometer or so to see if we could find the soldier camp, but after some searching and berry picking we came up short on both. The winter usually linger longer in this area but late June next season I hope to be back and see what this place hides.

The next few rainy days I glued together the coffee mug, and a Luftwaffe plate I had found somewhere earlier, and they both looks presentable enough to be put into the collection.

Yesterday also had nice and relatively soft weather, and before nine I was ready in the forest on my latest permission to do some strolling around. I found a small dumping pit right away and soon my fingers were in pain from the cold soil.

For a change this pit didn`t have any rocks filled on top so I saved my fingers a bit by just scooping fine sand and rust out with the shovel.

As often it was mostly trash in it but a very few items made it into my backpack: A simple multi-tool, a civillian porcelain cup, a enamelled fieldkitchen plate, a few buttons, toothcream and a small hammer. Several pairs of rotted combat boots and a handfull of bottles went back into the pit.

A few hours later all I had grabbed with me was a small 200 gram weight, and a piece of metal from an Esbit stove. The temperature was much better as the sun had worked for some hours but the ground maintained its coldness.

After eating and searching some more I was on my way back to the car when I pushed through a shrubbery and in the midst of it was the remains of a building.

It was large and full of signals. I opened up a few of them across the building and it made me believe the entire thing might be like a big burn pit, or more likely the building was full of stuff and then burnt down.

In one end of it I dug till I found the top of what I think is a large steel stove. The metal looks perfectly preserved and it is standing upright, so it will be a big job getting it to the surface. I found a German Reichspfennig coin from 1926, a soup container which I hope have the inner kettle and ladle present, a soup bowl and some bottles, a rifle cleaning kit and several bits of broken porcelain. The last signal I checked was a Kraftstoff barrell top. The second one this season.

After ca 6 hours I was tired, all wet and my fingers had fell off so I retreated back home and got the oven going, before making dinner.

This morning it was wintery again with -4 Celsius, and worse weather is coming..