UK DETECTOR NET provides link to gold ring

Early on Tuesday 18th June Brian & Mo' received an e-mail from a Themos Tsikas, from Oxford, England, explaining that he had lost a heavy 18 carat gold ring the previous evening whilst working in a friends garden. He asked if we could direct him to somewhere he may hire a metal detector.

UK DETECTOR NET could do better than that for the site contains a database of detector users from all over the world, and.... one lived in Oxford. Within minutes Brian & Mo' had e-mailed Themos back with the e-mail address of Robert Morton, a detectorist living in Oxford.

Robert logged on to his works e-mail system that same morning and found Themos' e-mail passed by UK DETECTOR NET. He replied straight away enclosing his phone number and awaited a reply.

He received a phone call at 7.30 pm that same evening. As they were only twelve miles apart, Robert suggested that he could pop over that night to try to find the ring. The following is Robert's story of the search:-

"Themos had been cutting long rough grass and had moved it to the bonfire a little distance away. I used my XLT to search the area where he had cut the grass. After an hour I had found nothing except a grimy 20p. The site where the garden was had a history dating back to the 1600's and was heavily contaminated with metal."

"I then moved on to the bonfire area. At this point I got my second machine out of the car and gave Themos a quick demo on how to use it. We spent another hour detecting around the bonfire but were unable to find anything."

It was now 10.00 pm and as the light was fading fast I suggested that we move back to the first area and try again for another twenty minutes. The twenty minutes passed and we still hadn't found the ring. I started to head back to my car and at the same time tried to think of the best way to admit to Themos that I wouldn't be able to find his ring that day, and to suggest that I should try another day, when the XLT produced a beautiful sound. It was too dark to see what had produced the signal so John grabbed a torch and shone it where the signal had come from to show the wonderful glint of gold."

"After two and a half hours searching I had found Themos's ring. Although it was dark at the time, the little light that the torch produced was enough to show the grin and relief of Themos."