My wife and I went for a walk a few weeks ago and, when it turned out we needed to book to enter our original destination, instead took a walk beside the picturesque section of the Chersterfield Canal that joins Shireoaks and Turnerwood.

On the way up to Turnerwood we passed a man swinging some sort of weight on the end of a cord into the canal and then fishing it back out.

After reaching Turnerwood, we turned around and re-traced our path back along the canal. The man was still there, casting his weight into the water of the canal. My curuosity piqued I asked him what it was he was doing.

It turns out he was “magnet fishing”. This practice involves the use of a powerful neodymium magnet to try and grapple metalic items from the bed of the body of water. Looking it up later I saw reports of people “catching” somewhat less-than-desirable items such as live hand-grenades and unexploded bombs that have lain submerged since the 2nd World War.

At my time of asking the man about it, all he’d found was a 3′ length or rebar though.

Yashica Mat 124G & Ilford HP5+.

Taken on 12 July 2020