Tilting at Windmills

Knabbs Ridge Wind Farm




Photos by Ca ne fait rien


http://www.walkingenglishman.com/leedsharrogate20.htm

http://www.yes2wind.com/

http://www.army.mod.uk/royalsignals/rsa/harrogate/index.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menwith_Hill

http://www.harrogate.gov.uk/harrogate-3297

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=512176&in_page_id=1770

The Pylons

By Stephen Spender

The secret of these hills was stone, and cottages
Of that stone made,
And crumbling roads
That turned on sudden hidden villages

Now over these small hills, they have built the concrete
That trails black wire
Pylons, those pillars
Bare like nude giant girls that have no secret.

The valley with its gilt and evening look
And the green chestnut
Of customary root,
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.

But far above and far as sight endures
Like whips of anger
With lightning's danger
There runs the quick perspective of the future.

This dwarfs our emerald country by its trek
So tall with prophecy
Dreaming of cities
Where often clouds shall lean their swan-white neck.

Tilting at Windmills

We first noticed the Knabbs Ridge Wind Farms not dominating Nidderdale and Blubberhouse Moor against January brownfields and February brittle skies yesterday, when we went on a bimble about around Fewston Reservoirs, John 'Gaunts Castle and the other ancient landscars in the Washburn valley three miles or so up the A59. Skeleton trees amongst the other skeleton trees, more visible, evidently, than when the leafy hedgerow and the mighty oak and beech, the Forestry Commission spruce and the windbreak ridge scots pines obscured the vistas with their own splendours during the rest of the year.

Many people don’t like the turbines. They accept the need for renewable energy sources, for green fuel, that something has to be done about climate change, but they do not want to see the turbines. They object to the visibility of the wind farms springing up over the English countryside. Perhaps they regard them in a similar way to the pylons in Spender’s poem, marching across ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’. They certainly do not want them in their own back yards. I wonder idly to my companion as we lean on the fence making faces at the inquisitive and nervous sheep ( nervous of us, that is. The sheep appear to be unfazed by the stick insect ballerinas , arms outstretched over them like angel-shepherds) if the objectors would rather an opencast mine, or the bad old days of black lungs and choking towns, and wheezing emphysemia. I am sure they would like the dubious alternative of Nuclear power, provided of course that it was 'manufactured' well away from them and did not affect their property prices.

I would not mind one of these moving sculptures in a field next to me any more than I would mind a picturesque old corn mill, sails creaking and groaning , the millstones grinding, outside my bedroom window. In fact, as he pointed out, the view from our bedroom window includes the big white 'Prisoner' -like spheres of the sssshhh listening station up the hill, but these must be in a bit of a dip, otherwise we should be able to see them too. Which would be quite nice.

Anyway...

The turbines, to me, enhance that beauty, in the same way as the architects of the 18^th century enhanced the views across the land with their Palladian mansions and landscaped gardens, follies and managed parks and woodlands. Man’s hand on the landscape has changed it for better or worse since man first stood on his own two feet. When monetary greed is not the driving force, and artistic and altruistic motive is, man and nature can work pretty well together.

There are many images to describe these turbines ,”graceful” being the adjective most commonly employed almost to the point of cliché. Their slender white towers soar tapering upwards, their silver blades sweep , cutting the currents with aerodynamically shaped blades, shapes taken from nature itself. The gulls wheel and circle on the same wind currents that turn the sails. The eye is drawn upwards and peripherally outwards, recalling the effect of the perpendicular arches created by the masons of the great medieval cathedrals who brought heaven closer to the world of men. The spinning windmills lift the spirits to climb and soar as if our heels have mercurial wings attached. It is not only a spiritual experience, it is almost physical also, almost as if the structure has come alive and whipped you onto its shoulders leaving gravity to the box-people.

Alongside Knabbs Ridge runs a Roman Road which continues across Blubberhouses Moor. Man has been changing this particular landscape since the Bronze age. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and conservationists wish to keep it that way. The contradictions and ironies here strike us as something of a paradox.

If we do not build these stunning but alien and vaguely sinister cyborg-angels to harvest the wind and provide energy which does not destroy the planet, by our own greed for commodities dependent on fossil fuel energy which is destroying the very air we breathe, the water that sustains the whole of life, planet Earth and the sky above it and us miserable creatures scratching around on it, we must find some alternative form of energy that does not destroy the whole environmental structure , not just the décor of it.

The objections to the Knabbs Ridge Wind Farm seem to us even more ironic. Pan the camera around and the ever mulitiplying ‘golf balls’ of the Spy Base provide a Sci-Fi type backdrop to the wind turbines. Look back down the road and there is a convoy of heavily armoured military vehicles rumbling up the arrow-straight Roman troop road from the British Army training base.

Even Don Quixote might have been a tad confused about which windmill to tilt at first.