In farmer’s fields, ploughed and tilled and crops sown for hundreds of years, we searched endlessly for a legendary hoard of Roman gold coins.
But between cling film wrapped sandwiches, Grampa would turn to me, empty-handed, and say, ‘We’ll try the field over next time. We’ll have better luck there.’ I already felt lucky.
When you’re of a certain age, it’s easy to find adventure in everything. When you are smaller, every step feels half as long. Imagination runs wild, beds become race cars, discarded boxes become rocket ships heading to far off lands. Your heroes take on near mythical form.
Growing up, adventure took the form of long walks in the countryside around the town where I lived, and still do. Always in my Grampa's company.
We would set off from my parents house in all knitted woollen jumpers, courtesy of my Gran, and a metal detector slung over his shoulder. When he took a step I’d need a step and a half to keep up. Our spot wasn't far, you'd be lucky if it was half a mile from the front door, but it felt like a different world. We would spend the route march talking about what he’d be reading, or about what we were going to find.
He had consulted the maps, read the books. It was a sure thing. There had to be something beneath the soil around here. They’d found Roman coins just a few miles away. Why would they stop there?
But time after time we’d return to the same spots and unearth the same treasures. Rarely more than a few belt buckles and bottle tops. The only time a coin turned up was a 1966 sixpence found at the bottom of the field. Just my luck.
Then it was on to the next adventure, out of the field and heading towards the old farmhouse that must once have stood proud at the head of the field. Time had taken its toll. The roof was mostly bare of shingles and the first floor had grown weary of its place and now almost lay behind the front door, as if the house was saying it had had its fill of visitors and was trying to keep the outside world at arms length.
But where there’s a will there's a way and we found a way inside. Through windows that had long given up the ghost and were now paneless. There was something voyeuristic about being in there, exploring each room that hadn’t succumbed to time over and over again. Wondering what had happened in the years that it had been inhabited.
This was once a family home. It was easy to allow your thoughts to wander, to imagine what it was like for the people who had spent their days here. A farmer waking up before the birds, pushing tired feet into heavy work boots in a chair that faced a TV that he fell asleep in front of at night before he had the chance to watch it. A wife who laid towering plates of food on the table, enough to keep him strong. Kids just like me running around dreaming of when all this would be theirs.
It’s easy to be idealistic and anachronistic when you have a blank canvas like that.
No mobile phones in those days. My parents would begin to worry about where I was. Which far flung land had we found ourselves in this time? But eventually, often well after dinner had been served and plates cleared, I would collapse in through the door, exhausted. At night, from my bedroom window I could look between the trees and the Levi's factory at the bottom of my road and just about make out where we had been.
Where we once spent afternoons snaking up and down the fields, digging, sifting, patting empty soil back into place, modernisation has taken over. About 10 years ago, an oil company built a factory on the spot where I found the sixpence. The dilapidated farmhouse is now a petrol station. It would be poignant, although perhaps a little sad, to say that when they dug the land up they unearthed what we’d been looking for, but they didn’t find anything either. It might be better for that bit of treasure to stay elusive. Sometimes the hope can be what kills you, but sometimes it is the hope that drives you.
As we both grew older, the frequency of the walks slowed. After a handful of heart attacks they had all but ceased for him but he kept doing the reading, kept consulting the maps. Eventually I reached my teenage years and other interests took over. There’s no treasure in regret, but I will admit that as time has passed I have grown to wish I had spent more time walking.
But you always think one day you'll get back to it. You still hope adventure will emerge from the mist like Brigadoon. One day something will spark within you and you’ll have the thought to wonder what could be over there in that unexplored corner of your world.
When he died, as a family we descended on his old flat to do what had to be done. I looked through drawers and cupboards, once again looking for treasures. In a red biscuit tin, I found the same old treasures, belt buckles, bottle tops. This time though they were much more valuable.