Woodlands Fair held at the Queen Elizabeth Park in Hampshire, July 2012

Steve and Mike of the Waverley dowsers had spent the Saturday at the Woodlands Fair which is held on the Saturday and Sunday at the Queen Elizabeth park on the south downs in Hampshire, the fair is held every year at the same place which is a glorious location. Steve and Mike had done the Saturday and Mike asked if I could help out for the Sunday which I duly agreed.

Mike picked me up and ‘Tally Ho’, off we went to the Woodland Fair, when we arrived the stalls were already open for business although most of the owners were queuing up at the various breakfast bars because it was still too early for customers.  Mike and I quickly set up his dowsing stall and took turns to walk around the Woodland fair, with me taking plenty of photographs of the traditional country stalls and their astonishing wares.

Although we were not providing dowsing training, it was more an introduction and ‘have a go with the rods’, we would then tell people about the British Society of Dowsers website, as well as the Waverley dowsers who are fairly local to the Fair area,  we would also invite the people to the Waverley dowsers as a guest plus our stall gave all the people a bit of fun at the fair.

After we had both walked about looking at the stalls we unpacked Michael’s experiments and began to set them up on the stall, we soon realised there was no running water to fill up the long tubes we used to test people’s dowsing skills with the ‘L’ rods, these worked well because we would lay out two long plastic pipes which were plugged at both ends, one of the pipes would contain water, and the ‘customers’ would be invited to walk across the pipes holding a set of ‘L’ rods, the rods would turn (usually) when a person stepped across the water filled pipe, but not over the empty pipe, a very good test of people’s sensitivity to ‘subtle’ energies.

As we had no water I took my rods and walked about, looking for and finding an underground water source or moving water not more than 15 feet from the stall, so we decided to use that as our experiment, this worked well with probably 80% of all the people holding the rods would turn when they walked over the ground water, we would explain about the subtle energies and the width of the energy field which would generally amaze most people when the rods would straighten up again after they had walked over and passed the energy field..

Table with Dowsing experiments

Other experiments that Mike has devised over the years  which produce easily  recognisable results for those who ‘have a go’ at a dowsing experiment would be the clear plastic container with twisted wire of opposing twists at each end, holding the plastic tube upright you would hold your pendulum over the twisted wire,  this is a great experiment as the pendulum will start to spin in sympathy with the twist of the wire, and there is nothing you could do to prevent it, I like this experiment as it demonstrates clearly subtle energies in action, if the wire has a counter-clockwise twist then the pendulum will start to revolve also in a counter-wise movement, Mike has many experiments devised for the budding dowser and they are all included in his books.

Michael was demonstrating lots of his experiments from the two books on dowsing he had written and I played his supporting cast, towards the end of the day as it got quieter we started to have a play with our pendulums which caught the attention of several people who wandered over, we then duly demonstrated some of the various experiments, both also had a go and were amazed at how they too could get results just as quickly and easy.

Several times I was asked to dowse what type of wood various bits of furniture were made from as people walked past our stall to the car park, I was accurate every time, until a couple carrying a huge coffee table made from one piece of wood stopped next to the Dowsers stall, as they rested they invited me to dowse the wood, I dowsed beech, they laughed and said it was oak, I dowsed again with a different question, and pointed at the table legs, they are beech and the top is oak I said, much to the delight of the table owners and a small audience who were admiring the table.

The Woodland Fair organisers came up to Michael at the end of the day to offer congratulations for his stall (both Saturday and Sunday) had attracted the most amount of praise from the Fair’s visitors, which was very pleasing for him.

Below we present some photographs from the Country Park Fair with their wonderful hand made products and crafts, to find some more information on this annual fair please follow this link to the official website here.