My trip to Spain got off to a real good start. Less than 2 hours after landing in the capital city of Madrid, I was in an open field swinging my new Shadow X5 detector. The first find came in less than 5 minutes with the recovery of a coin that turned out to be a Spanish republic piece dated 1870. Not the best find ever but a start. I was soon into a rhythm and finding the usual musket balls, horseshoes and the occasional odd relic and then the bronze terminal piece from a medieval dagger sheath. I have a collection of these and this was a welcome addition to the collection. Before that day was over I was to find another medieval terminal and one roman bronze terminal for a total of three. Not bad for the first day out. Jet lag was soon taking its toll one me as well as the intense Spanish heat so I decided to take a break and drive around looking for more sites in the immediate area.

  I soon located an olive grove full of medieval and Arabic potsherds and decided to give it a whirl. I got a good signal on the first pass that turned out to be an aluminum coin of the dictator Francisco Franco mounted on a horse in the fashion of a noble night. The Americans that metal detect in Spain irreverently refer to this coin as “Tony on a pony”. Not what we’re looking for and into the junk pocket it went. Two passes later and a Phillip II copper cob came out of the ground and then a medieval religious medal. Next a beautiful button with the bust of queen Isabel II. Time for lunch. I drove up onto some high ground to get a better view of the land and to enjoy a lunch of salt cured Serrano ham and a small loaf of bread known as chapata. I washed it all down with two liters of water and leaned back against an ancient olive tree and lit up a smooth Kentucky cheroot cigar. Does it get any better than this? Oh yeah!

  Evening was coming on and the fierce heat of the sun was giving way to a chill dry wind and it was time for Karl to find a place to bed down. I soon located a spot with lots of tall standing dry grass and made myself a nest to put my sleeping bag on. I was soon staring at the stars and watching meteorites streak through a night sky so full of stars and so clear it looked like you could reach out and touch em. I awoke at about midnight and spent another hour looking at the sky and don’t remember much until the sun woke me in the morning.

  Breakfast was a couple of muffins and more water and then it was back to swinging the detector. The day produced another dozen or more musket balls from a battle between the French forces under Napoleon and the Spanish. In years gone by I have had so many musket balls in my pockets that they pulled my pants down over my hips. I flung these recent finds into fields still planted with wheat so that some other lucky soul might find them after the harvest. I’ve still got a 12 ounce drink cup full of them at my mother in law's house and no longer collect them. I managed to find a piece of ground with the bright red potsherds of the roman high imperial times and from there recovered a few roman coins and a lead weight or balance used with ancient scales to measure grain. I normally don’t save lead anymore unless it is in the form of an interesting lead seal, statuette or gaming piece from ancient times. About noon I returned to my vehicle to start the trip to the city Zaragoza where my wife and two daughters were waiting at my sister in law's house. I made several more stops on the way and checked out a field where I normally pull gold coins from the late 1700’s through the middle 1800’s but found it planted in wheat. The quickest way to get sideways of the law while detecting in Spain is to enter a planted field and start digging. Common sense would dictate that you don’t do things like that but common sense doesn’t prevail among Spanish detectorists and they have gotten a bad name for themselves by doing just that as well as violating the tombs of ancient Celtic-Iberian, Roman and Visigoth burial grounds. It is getting more and more difficult to detect in Spain because of the actions of renegade detectorists. If they would at least cover their holes instead of leaving them gapped open that would help.

  I soon made my way to a site known as “Las Tetas” or the breasts. A pair of mountain peaks side by side topped with bare rock give the impression of, well let your imagination run wild. I started at the bottom and fought my way through the thick underbrush to get to the top and on the way found a nice Visigoth brass adornment for clothing. I was starting to get the hang of the Shadow X5 and with the light weight and raw power of this machine I knew I had a winner. While hanging off of a tree branch and swinging the detector on the down side I got a great repeating signal and after moving away 8” of dirt still had the object in the hole. Another 3 inches of dirt and there lay a beautiful 2500+-year-old Bronze Age arrowhead sitting in the same spot where it fell thousands of years ago. A few more roman coins and bronze relics capped off the day here and I dropped back to an “Ermita” or small church in the mountains all that remained of a medieval village. This place was well known to every detectorist in the area and had in the past produce hundreds of coins for me from medieval times through the 1800’s. When I got there you could see where other detectorists had moonscaped the place in search of coins and relics. Time to put the Shadow X5 to the test. I selected a small medieval garden plot surrounded by 4 rock walls and began a slow steady sweep right through the middle of some obvious recent recoveries. All of the holes gaped open at 6-8” and would have discouraged me in the past. Not so with the Shadow, it wasn’t long until I got that faint repeatable signal coming through the headphones like an echo from the past. I moved about 6” of dirt and the signal got loud and clear but was still deeper in the hole. It took another 6” of dirt being removed to reveal a beautiful hammered medieval coin made of billion or a mix of copper and silver. Five more deep faint signals turned out to be another 4 medieval coins and a bronze medieval belt buckle. Not bad for a hammered site. I then moved down into field that had always been planted in wheat before but not this time and soon located another 3 coins and 4 buttons. All of the buttons were in great shape and I now had one with the bust of king Fernando VII the father of Isabel II. These buttons with the busts on them look like small coins and the best I can tell from research were worn by supporters of the king or queen and was an outward sign of their support or a downright attempt at sucking up. At any rate they are interesting to say the least.

  Time for me to get on the road to home base and to prepare for a trip to a village to document a church basement full of medieval mummies. After a day of rest my niece’s husband Santi “Santiago Portolé s” picked me up in his four wheel drive for a trip to a remote village in the province of Soria. We climbed up and up into the mountains and was soon among some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable and the smells of the spices and herbs growing wild were almost overwhelming. Eagle soared among the mountain peaks and wild streams loaded with trout rushed down the mountain. I counted hundreds of potential sites that had never had a metal detector put to them and one day will return to try my luck at those sites also. After a long drive we arrived at the town of Calcena and the Mayor of the town, a friend of Santi’s escorted us to the church. Things had changed in the two years since I had first gotten the invitation to view the mummies and the Mayor was taking a chance by letting us in the beautiful medieval church. The town’s people had pulled up the ladder going into the pit with the mummies and all photos and filming had to be done from above. I was under the impression that the bodies had been buried and then through some natural means had mummified. Surprise on me when I found out that these mummies predated the church and were discovered after the church was built. Seems that the priests walking across the floor noticed a hollow sound and dug through the floor just to ensure that the area was structurally sound and would not cave in. During the investigation they discovered that this particular room was atop a great cavern and in the cavern was over 50 grown men that had died so suddenly and so horribly that they remained on their feet with a horrified look on their faces. What ever killed them had preserved them and had forever frozen the look of shock and horror on their faces. The bodies were so well preserved that medieval medical students would travel for miles to the site and tear the bodies apart in their studies of anatomy and medicine. Medieval writings mention the strange circumstances in which these mummies were found but offer no explanation or speculation as to what had caused this most strange and mysterious arrangement. The town’s folk are now trying to cover this thing up and I fear that I was the last outsider allowed to view the remaining mummies. I would love to be allowed down to study and even take some soil samples to analyze in order to explain the mystery. Right next to the church is the remains of a Roman castle and the cavern extends from the church to just under the hill where the castle is situated. A mystery indeed and one that I am not ready to let got of anytime soon and would love any comments or inputs from Floyd’s readers. What could have caused this? I leave you with this question and with some pictures to contemplate. Pictures of the church, of the mummies and of some of my finds.

This trip was quite productive as I located future detecting sites that I can’t wait to hit in the future. I’ll have some more reports for you soon for this trip as well as some pictures of outstanding finds made with the Shadow X5 metal detector in my opinion the best metal detector I’ve used yet. It is the lightest and easiest to pack into a site and has more power than any other detector I’ve used. I have used a variety of the top detectors by the top manufactures to include the new multi-frequency detectors while detecting in Spain and would with confidence pit the Shadow X5 against any of them. Adios for now and keep on swinging that detector.