Rosemary Williamson dowses the Norman church at Knowlton, on Cranborne Chase.Lesley Bates gets her wires crossed and finds out how to cleanse a room without a duster.

TO the family picnicking in the sun at Knowlton, it must have looked a trifle odd. Five women were advancing in an orderly row towards the ruined Norman church at the centre of the ancient Neolithic henge, bent pieces of wire held purposefully in each hand, pointing forward like antennae.

Which, in a sense, they were.

We were at Knowlton, high on Cranborne Chase, to dowse for ley lines under the guidance of Rosemary Williamson, a jolly 50-year-old divorcee from Fordingbridge.

It was all part of a workshop Rosemary runs regularly, giving complete novices like me the chance to try their hand (and rod) at divining ley lines, locating auric fields, and cleansing negative energy from places and people using a crystal dowser.

Now I'm the sort of person who automatically assumes that twitching hazel rods and crystals circling clockwise has more to do with clever manual manipulation than universal energy.

So no one was more surprised than me when, after walking forwards several yards, my rods crossed of their own accord.

Seconds later, my fellow students, Sonia, Annie and Sandie, all came to a halt in a parallel line with me, wires similarly crossed.

"Congratulations, Lesley," called Rosemary, "you are now a dowser."

Well, blow me.

We'd been exhorting our dowsing rods in muttered undertones to show us the ley lines around Knowlton,

Rosemary said we'd found the first of the concentric lines that surround the henge, probably following the tracks of pagan worshippers who tramped here and circled the henge in ceremonial procession.

For the next two hours, we marched around finding ley lines and fields of energy, laying hands on ancient yews and stone pillars and feeling our hands tingle.

We also located one another's auric fields - different shapes for different people with different issues - and did a spot of auric cleansing.

All a bit rum, but huge fun and the site itself is spectacular on a fine day - an atmospheric, spiritual place surrounded by glorious Dorset countryside.

It seemed a shame to leave, but lunch at Coffee and Cream in Fordingbridge, and quite the most sophisticated ploughman's ever, beckoned.

The afternoon was spent in the sunny courtyard at Rosemary's cottage, where we swapped dowsing rods for crystals and learned to cleanse rooms of negative energy and people of - well, all sorts of things.

Much of this involved drawing sketches, which frankly would have shamed a four-year-old, of our rooms at home and suspending our crystals above them.

Our crystals seemed to have the measure of our doodles and indicated sites of negative energy - usually where electrical gadgets were plugged in - with uncanny accuracy.

I don't know why it all seems to work and nor does Rosemary.

"I don't question it but it does," she shrugs.

"But I like open-minded scientific people to come along because it's a challenge to me."

Twelve years ago, she took a short course in dowsing at Bournemouth College and followed it up by training with master healer Jack Temple.

"I realised there was something to it," she says.

"It's all about discovering the earth's energies - there is so much we don't know.

"Everything is made up of energy - just because you can't see it, it doesn't mean it isn't there."

So I went away, my auric field cleansed, my energy renewed and my shoulders slightly sunburned.

I don't know what to make of it - no doubt there are all sorts of prosaic scientific explanations - but I enjoyed my dowsing day enormously and I won't let anybody pour cold water on it.

Rosemary Williamson runs dowsing workshops/field trips quite regularly. Contact her for details on 01725 658062.