It was a fine day when the party (Russell Dean, Jane Grimshaw and Eileen Roche) went to Holmbury Hill fort, and started searching for the E-line. There were a great many holiday-makers about, it was difficult to dowse unobtrusively. Suddenly, a guinea-fowl, or little brown bird, appeared walking on the path. Eileen told Jane to follow it, which she did. The bird kept stopping and clucking to Jane, and waiting for her to catch up, and led her down the path to the edge of the middle ramparts of the fort. It led her first through the undergrowth where it stopped by an abandoned Fanta can and wouldn't move. When Jane tried to pick the bird up, it hopped through the undergrowth a couple of feet back to the path leading down the hillside and stopped again on the last rampart of the fort. It refused to move from there, and indeed was still there on the ground when we finally left.
On this spot the E-line was easily dowsed. Russell took compass bearings, checked against the map, everyone dowsed the same line, taking bearings on the trees (two large yew trees and Scots pines in a clump nearby), helping each other through the fallen trees and undergrowth. It seems the E-linejust skirts the edge of the ramparts of the fort to the south-east, at 253 degrees.
Later, Jane found that we had parked the car in the middle of the carpark aligned nearly due south with an energy line running between the fort and the car park. She called this an example of subconscious parking.