photo Olive Repton: from Turbine Watch 312
This is – roughly speaking – what Linfairn wind farm would do to the Girvan valley. It shows the Clyde wind farm – and comes from the Turbine Watch 312 website, where it is linked to an article on Alex Salmond’s view that “turbines do not seriously detract from the Scottish scenery.” This is old news (October 2012), but it’s a new photo for our website, and one that brings home what we are faced with in Straiton.
The scenery / tourism arguments have been heating up: we have put up some other links on the tourism page: at savestraitonforscotland.com/impact/tourism/#tourismlinks
Save Straiton for Scotland 
We were speaking to someone this week who owns a property very close to one of the Lanarkshire wind farms (sorry the name has slipped my mind but I think it’s close to Wishaw). A few turbines were erected many years ago at a very early stage in wind energy production, but this wind farm has been added to over the years, apparently going from a single line of turbines to several lines deep. This person was saying that although the turbines are 2 miles from his property he now considers them an eyesore, because of the gradual increase in numbers, and the staggering of the turbines. Where a few turbines on the skyline looked okay in the initial stage, the subsequent “adding on” and staggering effect has resulted in a look similar to shattered glass on the horizon and actually makes it uncomfortable to look at as a vista (similar to the example photo by Olive Repton). This person also said that when the original wind turbines were erected there was little public knowledge (though who knows what the wind companies knew then?) about the impact: not only on the view but also in terms of reliability for energy production. He now recognises their inadequacies and would not endorse wind energy as first choice.
The wind turbines are not scenic! My first thought on this photo was…”invasion” of the tall white towers! My heart goes out to Scotland, and anywhere else, these monsters are being erected willy nilly, and with such secrecy on the part of the wind companies! The lies we are told. “If the people of your town don’t want them, we will go away.” What a crock that is! You are not alone…believe me!
My heart goes out to Scotland, and anywhere else these monsters are being erected. The wind companies are quite vague on answers to questions, leave much out of reports…all they are really interested in is money in their pocket, with not a care of the effects it will have on people living nearby, mentally, physically and emotionally….might as well as financially too, because the ones that are going here, the power is not staying local…it’s going out of state! (BTW…I’m in northeastern USA, in New Hampshire). When I first looked at the picture above, my first thought was “invasion”. How horrible for a beautiful countryside!
Hello “Merry”, perhaps you would be kind enough to state what impact wind farms have had on the tourist industry in New England? My husband and I were hoping one day to visit but are a little put off by the wind farms we’ve heard are going up there. We are told in Straiton (yes, the Straiton of this website!) that there will be “little impact” but it would be good to hear first hand what the real story will be.
I understand that the towers at this site are 80m tall and that the turbine blades have a 90m diameter, giving a blade tip height of 125m i.e. the same as for those proposed for Straiton. Looking at the photograph above, how can any sentient person believe that anything so out of scale with its surroundings could ever be appropriate in the Girvan Valley or its environs?
It looks like a scene from War of the Worlds (the Tom Cruise version), with alien tripods coming over the hill and attacking the homes below. Despicable.
Reblogged this on Quixotes Last Stand.
Aye indeed.When my grown up children speak of visiting Scotland with me, I hae ma doots about whether I can be happy with what has happened to so much of the hillside scenery. The one place that I love and has so far defeated a wind Armada (offshore) proposal, is the shores of County Down, under the Mourne Mountains, where I spent 14 years after my father got a Head Forester job on the magnificent Tollymore Park. I’m a US citizen now, but still a Scot.