A Life of Ley Hunting

1962

July 1962
Ley Hunter's Club and Pendragon Society trip to Avebury.
Philip Heselton and I travelled by train to Winchester, where we met the coach which had been organised by the Pendragon Society, a group interested in the legends of King Arthur. Tony Wedd was also present on this trip. He had postulated the link between leys and UFOs and thus was to bring the subject into the public eye once again, with the idea of energy currents connected with them (which had come up in the time of Watkins, but had been largely forgotten).

We travelled on to Avebury, where we visited the site museum and then viewed the circles and Tony noticed many skyline clumps of trees visible from the bank. He had noticed this in Kent and published the details in his booklet "Skyways and Landmarks", in which he had brought forward the theory that the ley points marked magnetic currents. He felt these were the same currents that had produced the orthotenic alignments of Aime Michel, who had found alignments of UFO sightings during a particular flap in France in 1954.

On this trip we had the rare privilege of climbing to the top of Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe, and standing where Charles II had stood with Stukeley and noticed the "multitude of tiny Spiders". We did not see any on this trip, but admired the view of the prehistoric landscape. Although we did not realise it at the time, we were also standing where a large hole was to appear much later, probably subsidence caused by previous passages cut into the mound, so we could have all suddenly found ourselves inside the hill! Luckily that did not happen.

We also visited West Kennet Long Barrow, and I remember feeling that it was powerful and did not seem to have the atmosphere of a tomb, but rather of a place of worship. Tony talked of his ideas, and mentioned a number of anachronistic artefacts that had been found, such as what seemed to be a battery in an ancient shipwreck which would have been capable of plating metal; also a perfect steel cube and a gold bracelet, both of which had been found inside lumps of coal.

Shortly after this trip I entered a "Roving Reporter" competition in "Tuesday Rendezvous", which was rather like an ITV version of "Blue Peter". The brief was to write a report on some recent event, and I chose the trip to Avebury. I was rather staggered that I was one of the two winners, and thus on August 14th was invited to the studio to be interviewed by Hugh Moran, a journalist on the "Daily Mail" who was also one of the team for the programme.

Tony Wedd's trip to France, looking for mark points at Aime Michel's orthoteny points and centres
I visited Meursanges first, in Burgundy, and just about where M. and Mme Vitre had observed their UFO, and alerted nearby farmers, I found a group of three pine trees. Strike one! At Frasne, disappointed, I found nothing - until I re-read my Michel, and realised that actually the UFO had been seen south and west of Dompierre. Useful negative check: you cannot find pine trees by just going out and looking for them!

Travelling on to Le Tertre I found a little knoll by the roadside, with a little shrine set at its edge, and a tree clump including both pinus nigra and pinus sylvestris: holy ground, beloved of the gods. (Maybe some angels died at Meurs-anges?) Strike two!

Next I visited the Rhine bank between Niffer and Kembs, and saw nothing in the twilight, so turned into the woods to camp. In the morning I found myself in a forest thick with Scots pines! Too thick to make out any particular mark point, so I could only allot myself two-and-a-half points out of three. Maybe that's not conclusive to anyone else but me. But I returned home well satisfied that leys and orthotenies had some very promising points of similarity.

Tony Wedd, 1962

November 1962
There was a meeting of the recently-formed Ley Hunter's Club (the only one ever held!) at Caxton Hall in London, at which Allen Watkins (Alfred Watkins' son), Tony Wedd and Philip Heselton were present. Three years later, Philip was to start, under the auspices of the club, The Ley Hunter magazine, which ran for many years and under several editorships, notably Paul Screeton.

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