An evening out with the Tamar Dowsers is something of a Magical Mystery Tour. After getting lost in Withiel, and picking my way through hidden lanes, where at the next bend I was unsure if I would be feted by Hobbits or dismembered by Orcs, the surreal sight of the tips of the St Breock wind farm jumped over the horizon - the blades ploughing through the ether like a dozen inanimate, airborne, synchronised swimmers. Then, of course, there was the dowsing.
The St Breock Downs long stones are an odd couple. We dowsed them to have been erected before 3000 BC, despite the English Heritage sign to the contrary. Both had been damaged at some stage, but both still held significant energy - and perhaps more importantly still marked important sites, discovered in distant millennia, but still discernable to 21st Century man, with a little help.
The larger stone, by the ‘car park’, stood at the crossing point of two firm energy lines, one of which carried on through the nearby Beacon Point - an interesting reflection on the theory that such lines were energised with ritual fire. The line continued beyond the first stone towards its distant cousin. John discovered a series of straight radials, which seemed to meet at a point not quite in the centre of the stone. I traced an energy spiral around the stone, which also seemed to focus in on that same, off-centre node. Perhaps the stone had shifted due to subsidence at some stage, or had been re-erected just off centre. John sensed a slight feeling of discomfort in the energy field of this stone, and we adjourned to inspect the other Menhir.
Joy used her countrywise nous to find the only weakness in the crudely-finished barbed-wire defence of the second field, which enabled us to reach the eastern marker. This stone was felt to have been erected a little earlier than the first, and still to be standing in its original location. John found 8 radials here, and I traced the crossing earth energy. Despite the stone having been decapitated at some stage, and now romantically beleaguered in a field of curious sheep, this site was more balanced.
The group returned to the transport, where Ruth gave us an update on the information gained on the recent Devon Dowsers training day.
St Breock is a place of very mixed energy. Breathtaking views across the north Cornwall coast, surrounded on all sides by a patchwork of ancient fields, are strangely juxtaposed with piles of garden waste, broken bottles and abandoned farm buildings.
Despite these contradictions, St Breock remains a place of great continuity. Here, people who were legendary, millennia before the arrival of Christianity, used a dependable and sustainable energy they found in the earth; 5000 years later, we are using the same site to generate clean and renewable energy from the sky.
Nigel Twinn
Tamar Dowsers
July 2002