Start With the Ground Beneath Your Feet

West Wales is generous ground for dowsing. Springs break out along the valley sides, old field drains run beneath rushy pasture, and the uplands carry the quiet, complicated feel that many people go looking for. It is also rough country: saturated bog, steep bracken slopes, disused mine shafts and livestock in almost every field. Any dowsing walk begins, then, with an honest look at where you are taking people.

Keep the group small — six to eight is plenty, and four is often better. Beyond that, rods get knocked, questions get repeated, and the quiet attention a good session needs disappears.

Choose a Route That Keeps Everyone Safe

Walk the route yourself, alone or with one other person, at least a fortnight before the group meets. Note where you can stop safely, where the ground is firm, and where mobile signal drops away.

• Stick to public rights of way, open access land and quiet lanes you know are passable. Get the landowner's permission before entering any private field.
• Avoid deep bog, quarry edges, mine shafts, steep coastal cliffs and tidal ground. Cors Caron and similar raised bogs are beautiful and completely unsuitable for wandering off the boardwalk.
• Check the season: lambing runs from March into May, ground-nesting birds sit tight through spring, and cattle with calves can be unpredictable at any time of year.
• Plan for a maximum of two miles with a stop every twenty minutes. Dowsing is slower than walking, and cold hands lose sensitivity quickly.
• Leave a route card with someone at home, carry a paper map, and name a back marker who stays with the slowest person.

Ask everyone to bring waterproof boots, a spare layer, water and a head torch in autumn and winter. Add a small first-aid kit and tick tweezers to your own pack.

Set the Boundaries Before the Rods Come Out

Gather the group at the start and mark out the area you will work in, whether the day is about divining for water, tracing old drains or sensing earth energies. Be specific: "we go no further than the gate at the top of this field" works far better than "stay nearby".

• Agree the edges of the site, and point out fences, water and any hazards.
• Ask people to stay within sight of the group at all times, and never to wander off alone.
• Close gates, take all litter home, and leave stones and vegetation exactly as you found them.
• Explain that dowsing gives impressions, not instructions. Nobody digs, opens a culvert or shifts a boundary stone.

Agree a Quiet Hand Signal

This is the single most useful thing you can do, and almost nobody does it. Dowsing asks for stillness, and a shout of "I've got something!" from across a field ruins it for everyone.

Invent three simple signals and practise them before you set off. For example:

• Flat palm held up at shoulder height — I have a response; please do not disturb me yet.
• Two fingers raised and pointed at the ground — I have finished; come and look quietly.
• Closed fist, then a small wave towards the next spot — nothing here; let us move on.

Run through them twice at the start. Ask people to answer with a nod rather than a word, and to keep voices low enough that the person beside them can hear without effort.

Sharing Findings Without Disturbing the Place

Working quietly does not mean working in silence for two hours. Set a rhythm: twenty minutes of dowsing, then a short gather at a fixed point.

• Choose a meeting place — a gate, a standing stone, the corner of a lay-by — and keep returning to it.
• Let each person speak for a minute: what they asked, what they felt, and roughly where. No correcting, no scoring.
• Note the grid reference, the time and the direction of any line or watercourse in a shared notebook.
• Ask anyone with a strong response to mark it with a small stick they remove afterwards, rather than flagging the spot permanently.
• Resist crowding. One person at a time at a hotspot gives far better results than four sets of rods in the same metre.

Ending Well

Finish the walk before people get tired. Do a headcount at the last stop and again at the cars. A short closing round — one sentence each on what surprised them — settles the group and clears the mind for the drive home.

Afterwards, write up your own notes while the details are fresh, and keep a simple record of routes, weather, livestock and the places that produced consistent responses. Over a season or two, that logbook becomes your most reliable guide to where the water runs and where the quieter energies gather — and to which walks suit a small group beautifully, and which are best kept for yourself.