'Magnet fishing helps my grief after losing mum'

A woman says magnet fishing has transformed her mental health and helped her deal with grief after losing her mum.

Gill Shilvock goes out twice a week to canals around Birmingham and the Black Country, dangling a powerful magnet to trawl the water.

She said the group had pulled out cars, safes, bombs and even the front of a lorry.

"It's just helped me so much. Just getting out, taking my mind off my mom," she said.

Gill, 51, decided to try the hobby a couple of years ago after watching online videos by Black Country-based group the Peaky Dippers.

Her children bought her a magnet for her 49th birthday, which they replaced with a more powerful version after the army blew it up when she found ordnance.

"I'd only been doing it a couple of months and I pulled my first grenade out," she said.

"I was so scared, I asked this woman who passed me, this jogger, 'does this look like a grenade?'"

She had to call out bomb disposal experts again a few months ago when she and "partner in crime" Christy Perry fished out a mortar bomb.

"We closed Wolverhampton off," she said. "[It was] down Deans Road down by the racecourse.

"God it was big. We rang the police straight away and they rang RAF Cosford."

The pair have also found jewellery, old coins, and vehicles, as well as a stash of bullets and razor blades near to Winson Green prison.

Most finds are passed on to scrap dealers, but knives, guns and items that appear stolen are brought to police, who sometimes allow them to keep what they find.

"I just like finding old signs and stuff and padlocks and old shoes - I love horseshoes and the more the merrier with those," Gill said.

Before taking up the hobby, she said she had suffered a nervous breakdown and lost her job, while a motorbike crash left her with damaged discs in her back.

Over recent years she has also had watch her mum develop Alzheimer's disease.

"Before I wouldn’t leave the house," she said. "[Now] instead of sitting in the house every day moaning or just dwelling on everything I tend to get out. It's so good for your mental health."

Her mum died just after Christmas.

Gill is also helped out on her magnet fishing adventures by her grandchildren.

She described the water in and around Cradley Heath as "beautiful" and helps volunteers out at Bunble Hole nature reserve in Dudley.

"We just go down there and clean the water with them and its absolutely beautiful," she said.

She has just taken out a scrap licence and is now hoping to make a bit of "pocket money" to reinvest in her hobby.

"The scrap man's made thousands out of us," she laughed. "He loves us."

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