Dowsing Walks 10-12 May part 1

Introduction

The NT property I volunteer at is running several "Divining Walks" to give other volunteers and members of the public a chance to look at the moorland where dowsing is one of the tools we have used to try to understand the drainage system installed early to mid 19th century.

The walks includes many aspects of the ecology and water management at Lyme but this post relates only to the Divining or Dowsing aspect.

The content and location of the walks is based upon work carried out before the pandemic and you may wish to read First Survey and Discovery as background to the rest of this post.

** update: only the first walk took place due to attendees failing to turn up

Preparatory Outing

I met with the organiser and another volunteer last week to look at the area chosen for the demonstration.
The organiser (B) had not experimented with dowsing rods before. My colleague volunteer (K) had been involved in earlier pre-pandemic work on the moor, so had experienced reaction himself and observed it in others.

Walking a section of path where I knew culverts ran under, B & K tried out a set of rods. Initially B had barely any reaction but as they grew used to holding steady and loose, both were seeing movement, though not strong. Some inward movement was seen but short of crossing to parallel.

On the moor, the same pattern continued with limited reaction, however, a feel for it did seem to be developing.  B informs me that continuing the experiment at home, two underfloor pipes have been located.

Walk #1 Tuesday morning

Group Profile

Eight adults and one older child joined us for the walk, mostly new to dowsing.  Our third walk leader (T) was also new to dowsing so there were effectively 9 participants.

Introduction to Dowsing Rods

At the start of the walk, everyone took rods and was encouraged to pass over an area of the car park where I knew a large culvert ran, taking water from the gardens across the car park to the Millpond.

Unusually, everyone experienced movement. The degree to which the rods moved varied significantly but all reported that they were experiencing something. One or two people had reliable strong crosses.

At this stage, holding the rods was a clear issue and demonstrated how easy it is to restrict the movement by too tight a hold, the rods resting on top of a finger hindering it's swing, or letting the rods fall forward rather than horizontal. 

Only after the experiment did I explain what was under the ground and the apparent detections were all within a close range in spite of the area covered being around 10 metres in length.

Interestingly, one person experience the rods swinging out to the side rather than crossing in front which I have not seen before.

Moorland Exercise

Having established that reactions were being experienced, we progressed to the moorland.

I had taken care not to give any clue of what was to be found but encouraged the group to walk parallel to a gully over some 30m. It quickly became clear that repeated rod crossings were be experienced and there was agreement that these were occurring approximately every 5 yards.

Having established that pattern, the group walked out perpendicular to the gully and there was consensus that reactions were experienced every 10 yards.

This all matched earlier surveys where volunteers had established that areas of the moor showed a 10x5 yard grid pattern, most likely created by mole ploughing but yet to be confirmed by excavation.

The group moved from the banks into the middle of the gully and again there was good agreement that rod crosses were occurring down the middle of the dry gully. Once this was established, the group moved a little way down the gully to a point where an excavation was taken out in 2019 based upon dowsing and revealed a stone culvert with water flowing.

The last point of the walk was to return to the track and show where the culvert, and another from the next valley, discharged the flow to the surface and into the stream that continued to Poynton Brook and a split off to Drinkwater meadow.

conclusion

For the purpose of this blog, my takeaway from this walk is that 9 previously inexperienced dowsers, with no prior knowledge of the ground, echoed the 2019 discoveries described in post First Survey and Discovery.