When I arrive in Minting a strange and wild-looking cat climbs into my car and refuses to leave. David finds me trying to coax the cat out. David is a school head who lives in the old school house. He is a keen member of the historical society, a musician, and makes his own notebooks.

David is also a keen detectorist and was happy to show me his boxes of finds from the fields around his home.

He took me detectoring and we found something quickly. He dug a small hole and found an old Chinese coin.

David had found some before around the village.

Apparently Francis Bashforth, the local rector in 1857 to 1908, invented a new system for measuring the velocity of bullets and often visited China.

A few weeks after my visit David sent me the coin in the post.