I first became aware of the Earth’s subtle energies during my teens whilst visiting stone circles and standing stones close to where I lived in Cumbria in the North of England. These sites invoked within me a sense of mystery and importance and after a while I found that I could feel the energy radiating from the stones. I also became aware that many of the old stones communicate through a system of invisible lines of energy. Eventually I learned to dowse and plot the path of these lines across Cumbria and other parts of the north of England.
It was during the spring of 1992, after reading the book "The Sun and the Serpent" by dowser Hamish Miller and researcher and writer Paul Broadhurst,that I was inspired to walk and dowse the St Michael alignment, the longest East-West alignment in the country from Lands End in Cornwall to the Norfolk coast. During this pilgrimage, I had a strong sense that there must be an equivalent North-South line. Later that week I visited Glastonbury, and by chance, picked up a book in one of the second-hand bookshops called "Brigantia a Mysteriography“ by Guy Ragland Phillips published in 1976. As I opened the book, I saw an outline plan of Britain showing the Belinus Line. The first thing that impressed me about the line was its projection. It forms the longest land route through Britain in a North-South direction avoiding the sea.
One of the problems with drawing long alignments on a flat surface map is that you have to take into account the curvature of the earth. The further a line is drawn from longitude or latitude the more inaccuracy there is over long distances. I found that Phillips map drawn alignment between Cumbria and Cheshire, which he then projected down to Winchester and Lee on Solent on the south coast, suffers from these inaccuracies. Nevertheless, my instincts told me that the Belinus Line is roughly the right projection for a north south equivalent to the east west St Michael Line. Taking into account the map inaccuracies caused by curvature, the projection of Phillips line still passed through the city of Winchester, even though it missed the modern town of Lee on Solent on the coast. I decided to investigate Winchester first, for two reasons, one because it was the closest site to where I lived, and second I knew that the city was once an ancient spiritual centre along with St Catherine’s Hill on the outskirts of the city, which according to ley hunters is a focus of powerful earth energies.
Having the experience of dowsing the energy serpents along the St Michael Line axis from Cornwall to Norfolk, I soon located similar male and female serpents on the hill. At first, I thought the results were a creation of my imagination, and even when other dowsers confirmed my findings, I thought that I had created them. Therefore, I decided to undertake the tremendous task of following them from St Catherine’s Hill and be open to whatever adventure lay ahead. After 15 years of tracking these currents from the Isle of Wight to the top of Scotland, it became apparent to me that they follow a sacred axis, close to that of the Belinus Line, made up from a series of short recognised sacred routes or spirit paths linked together, for example, Meon Hill to the Rollright stones, and the Rollright stones to Uffington White Horse. After completing this journey and taking into account the significant sites where the currents cross, I named this route the Spine of Albion.