tgo magazine live letters archive

Cameron, that is good news.

I'm not exactly a fan of wind farms as you may tell from my posts, and like many folk I believe thet are a blot on the landscape.

It does still worry me though that these farms can be built out to sea off the coast of wild and beutiful areas, which is a whole different ball game in terms of planning regs etc, and they are still an eyesore.

Everyone forgets the pylons - these will be even more intrusive than the windfarms.

"What has delighted me is this development has been refused on the grounds that it will affect the aesthetic landscape value of the area.".......Cameron

I agree. It's good to see the Scottish executive is considering the aesthetic value in their decisions. Hopefully this will set a precedent for future planning decisions.

John

ALoveSupreme:

The anti-pylon movement in Scotland is very strong at the moment given the ridiculous proposals for the 137-mile line of super-pylons stretching from Inverness-shire through the Cairngorms National Park to the Central Belt.

But you're right - any application for a new power station should be considered in the light of any related applications that are going to follow. That, by the way, MUST include the likelihood of any fencing that has to be erected around a wind "farm" for public safety reasons.

Turbines can't be totally safe: in the past ice has formed on spinning blades in winter and that can be flung off as the blades turn. In West Yorkshire several years ago ice got into a blade, part of which sheared off; anyone who'd been hit by a chunk of blade probably wouldn't have known about it.

Safety aside, the erection of a fence is going to affect access, which should now be absolutely sacrosanct in Scotland.

It also needs to be borne in mind that every moorland power station needs miles of access road for construction and maintenance - the flora and fauna on wind "farm" sites doesn't stand a chance.

Sigh... where's Hayduke when you need him?

Cairns can be a pain, however I don't agree with TGO this month as regards cairns used on some estates.
In the Faroes cairns are used to mark paths through the hills between villages as it turns out that the average Joe who lives in the country and works in the outdoors does so because that's where they live and where the work is, they aren't genetic freaks with in-built GPS and sometimes in bad weather they DO get lost and it's for their safety. Same goes for estates here I suppose.
That said I hate hilltop cairns and would have them removed and replaced with a trig type pillar.