An Early Start.

I still find it a bit of a shock to the system to be driving off to work in the dark. Not even a hint of a sunrise this morning, only a faint lessening of the pitch black night. It was too dark to see any of the countryside but it was interesting to identify the little groups of lights dotted around the landscape. To the east about 5 miles away was the line of lights on The Station Inn at Blackmoor Gate. As the name suggests this was once a gate onto the open moor. Nowadays most of Exmoor is farmland with smaller areas of moorland on the hill tops. Blackmoor Gate was named after the Blackmore family one of whom, R D Blackmore was the author of Lorna Doone. Photo of the turbines over Barnstaple from the web.

As I reached the top of our drive I looked to the west and for the first time saw the red lights marking several of the 22 wind turbines, 2 miles away at Huntshaw Cross. They have been up and running for a while now but only at half speed. The trial period is about to end and they will double their speed which will no doubt more than double the amount of low level (like a giant cement mixer) noise from the motor and the rhythmic thrumming & high pitched whirring from the blades. I find it bad enough to see this industrialisation of our beautiful landscape and can only imagine what it must be like, in terms of noise pollution, to live near them. A local farmer near Bowden Corner has applied for permission to build a 200 ft high turbine. This size of turbine would produce 20x the amount of electricity he would need for his farm whilst destroying the peace of the countryside. Along with many local people I have made an official objection to the council and hopefully this creeping industrialisation will be stopped. It's not as if these turbines are that energy efficient as they need a secondary power source as a back up in times of low wind speed and health & safety regulations stop them from being run at fast efficient speeds.

Then as I turned to the south, 10 miles away was the vertical line of red lights on the TV transmitter at Huntshaw Cross while much closer nestled down in the valley were the twinkling lights of Barnstaple. Here and there scattered across the landscape were small groups of lights from villages and farms. So even in the dark there is still plenty to see.

I spent the whole day at school and came home early through the light drizzle that had been with us for most of the day. Looking towards Blackmoor Gate the landscape had an almost oriental quality with the hills fading away in the distance.