Dowsing on an Incoming Tide
It has often been said that there are more dowsers to the square mile in Cornwall than anywhere else on earth.
I have no way of verifying this, but the anecdotal evidence is strong enough for it to have become an uncontested urban (or in this case, rural) myth. It is surprising therefore that until 2002, this was one of the few counties not to have its own dowsing group.
People put it down to the individualism of those of us in the far south west. Cornwall has been a paradise and a haven for alternative culture, from the Newlyn painting school to the Leach pottery and the Hepworth tradition of sculpture; from druids to surfers and from the late dowsing legend, Donovan Wilkins to the living variety, Hamish Miller. There has never been a shortage of local talent, but finding a willing administrator to bring it together . . .
Four years ago the Tamar Dowsers coalesced around the figurehead of local tutor Alan Neal, but now we have become the old lions - there are new kids on the block. This was the first outing for the embryonic West Cornwall Dowsers and the first time the TDs had attempted a joint outing with another group.
Clearly, the forces that have no name thought it was a good idea and we were rewarded with good weather, two super sites and - bearing in mind these sites were either side of the dreaded A30 at Goss Moor on a sunny Sunday – next to no traffic!
We met at the ancient ‘hill fort’ of Castle an Dinas – not that it seemed to have much to do with being a castle. There was lots of evidence to dowse about pastoral habitation, by people who lived 2000 - 4000 years ago in round-houses, keeping their stock in rectangular pens. There were wells and formerly sacred places – and even the site of a bloody murder, with subsequent suicide, dating from the 1920s, for those of the Agatha Christie persuasion.
In true Arthur Watkins style, six leys skirt the ‘camp’, but only one runs north- south across it and dowses as being of a different date to the rest - more evidence and confusion for those seeking the function and use of ley lines. We communed with the local goats, ate lunch and moved on.

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