What happened in fact was that I'd visited Glastonbury and Avebury with a friend in the 90s. I'd read books about earth energies long before (in the 70s) and not been convinced. Other factors (too lengthy to outline here) led me back to the notion of earth energies, and basically I'd found myself sensing certain energies without the use of rods or any other apparatus.

At Avebury I saw dowsing rods for sale and bought a pair. I knew where there was supposed to be an easily locatable energy flow (the Cove) and sent my friend in a line that would cross that flow, to see what would happen. She didn't know what was alleged to be there. She found the rods responding where they would have done according to what I'd heard was there. I then tried the rods - and failed totally. Nothing happend for me at all, totally contrary to expectations and the fact that I knew what should be there. I'd been sensing energies and yet here I was completely failing to get anything.

My friend had been uncertain about the whole thing, but she was getting the results, so we tried again in another part of the Avebury complex where again I knew what was supposed to be there and she didn't - the D feature. I hoped there were too many stones for the presence of stones to give her cues, and I kept well back and as far as possible out of her line of vision. Again, she got the results others had found there.

A couple of days later we were on Wearyall Hill close to the Thorn. I sensed something without using the rods, so I told her that but didn't say where I sensed things. Sure enough she got results with the rods again, just where I'd been sensing things. I tried the rods again, and to my surprise they now worked for me. I'd evidently `tuned' my receptiveness now.

So while, as I've said, I think the term `earth energies' suggests we know something more than in fact we do know, I was sure of the following: I coudl sense the presence of something; another person could independently and unknowingly dowse what I'd sensed and also unknowingly dowse what others had dowsed; so the dowsing seemed to be verifiable and there was a correlation between what I was sensing and what the rods did.

Those experiments got me into all of this. I'd like to use something more tangible than earth energies, but I'm also curious about the energies because I'd already sensed them before using the rods. Subsequent experiments have verified my own findings on previous occasions at the same sites, and the findings of other people, and indepenent people have verified by results while I observed and tried not to influence them. (I'd like to see those findings verified by someone plotting them in my absence, to ensure I couldn't be influencing the other person unconsciously.) The earth energies (whatever they are) are important to me because I sense them and feel stimulated and changed by them, and the fact that they're a mystery interests me. Dowsing is a means to an end with them. But as far as dowsing itself is concerned, I'd like to see a great deal more research, carried out properly with scientific method and relating to a wide range of recognisable materials.