This month a couple from Bristol, UK about to celebrate their first wedding anniversary started posting on the various metal detecting forums online and social media sites seeking help for the recovery of a lost wedding ring that had fallen into the surf during a surf lesson.
I stumbled on the post thinking by then that the beach would have been searched and the ring recovered or lost to the sands for future treasure hunters in decades to come.
I contacted the couple and offered to complete a final search for them and between 10pm and 1am that night completed a gridiron search pattern of the area. The search did recover a ring which was engraved and I ended my search. It was unfortunately not the wedding ring being searched for. The following day the surf on the north coast started to build and as a surfer I enjoyed some evening waves. I had looked at the wave buoy data online and knew the approaching swell would cause the lost ring to sink deeper into the sands and out of reach of even the most powerful PI machines by the morning. That night I started my search again after sunset and searched in a spiral around a flag I dropped in the centre of the loss area as described by the couple. I was careful to overlap each search circle as I moved further away from the marker flag. The weather that night was stormy with periods of torrential rain. In the early hours after a total of 6 hours searching over two nights I dug a sharp clear signal with a tone that had my full attention. In the second sand scoop a ring showed and reflected the light from my head torch. The hallmarks matched the couples description and I imagined the couples joy when they would hear the news in the morning. I stood for a while listening to the sounds of the waves crash on the sands in the distance before leaving the beach.
Darren and Michelle were over the moon when they heard the news in the morning that their ring had been recovered 10 days after it was lost. They are not local to this area having been on holiday but they were keen to make the journey back to collect their lost wedding ring. It was decided to meet on the beach where it was found and they were able to tell me in detail of the moment it was lost and I the moment it was recovered. They explained that on the day it was lost a group of friends had searched for 3 hours in an attempt to recover it.
The first ring found during this search was engraved “Vinny and Toni forever X” and I with the support of the local newspaper are hopeful that we will be able to reunite this couple also with the ring they lost in the waves.
Paul – England, UK
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