Alastair Gilmour talks to one couple who risk watching their dreams being shattered by giant white wind turbines.

IT may look like a dilapidated farm steading at the moment, but an unremarkable group of buildings represents an enterprising future for Reg and Tamsin Watson.

The huddled settlement the couple are planning to restore is, in countryside measurements, two fields away from a proposed wind turbine that will, with its eight “sisters” at Moorsyde, dominate their view of north Northumberland and the Borders. Metric measurements come in at 600 metres, but when the mast and blades also take up 110 metres of sky, the structure will appear very close indeed.

For the time being, the couple are happy to be known as “outsiders” but they realise they have been captivated by the sheer beauty and peaceful calm of Ancroft Southmoor, near Allerdean, and its extraordinary surroundings. They’ve made a considerable financial investment and are devoting all their spare hours to convert cottages, grain stores and byres into holiday homes, craft units and a permanent home for themselves.

“The longer we spend here, the more engaging it becomes,” says Tamsin, who intends to work from home while Reg commutes to Edinburgh. Eventually, they will sell one of the converted cottages to help finance the whole project.

“We hoped to invest in the area, to work here, to attract visitors to the cottages and develop other tourism opportunities. If we can’t, it means the whole lot will collapse.

“It blights us directly. There has been no noise measurement done here at Southmoor. We’re unusually in the prevailing wind from the West – eight houses in total – and we’re completely downwind of a clutch of six turbines where there’s much more chance of overlapping noise levels, plus vibration.

“The Moorsyde site can’t meet the 35-decibel noise limit that the Environmental Statement demands – and if they can’t meet it, surely they should go away and think again. It all gets terribly technical.

“The proposals at Felkington (the nearby farm which has agreed to host the turbines) are horrendous; they’re far too close and if they followed planning guidelines, they’d be much further away.” In common with virtually everyone who is affected by windfarm plans, the Watsons sympathise with their farming neighbours who have opted for 360-foot turbines on their prime agricultural land. To most of them, it’s financial salvation.

Tamsin says: “They were offered huge money and it would have been difficult for anybody to it turn down. We understand that. Everybody here is fighting tooth and nail; it’s just not the right place.

“It’s magical here. It gets so dark you can’t see your car when you go out at night and all you can hear is the rustle of bat wings. You can’t sacrifice that.

“We’re very ‘green’, we’ve got solar panels and ground-source heating planned; we eat organic food; my mother is a member of Greenpeace and I’m proud to stand up and say I’m a complete Nimby.”

Reg is in complete agreement. “The council can meet its renewable targets in other ways without blighting so many people and destroying so much. The developers haven’t done their homework; the landscape hasn’t got the capacity to support wind turbines – and it’s just not the right landscape to put them in. It’s detrimental to the people who live here and to the people who visit.”

A recent report on windfarms and their impact on the locality has been broadly welcomed by the local Moorsyde Action Group, but it has its reservations. The Arup study of windfarm development in north Northumberland, commissioned by the North-East Assembly, has found the area can accommodate up to 15 turbines – fewer than half the number currently being proposed.

Applications to build 10 turbines at Moorsyde, 10 at Wandylaw, nine at Barmoor and seven at Toft Hill have been submitted to Berwick Borough Council but have yet to be determined. A decision on Moorsyde is expected in September.

Reg concludes: “We’ve got barn owls and merlins here. Planning permission requires us to put a bat loft in, but they don’t seem fussed about huge turbines 600 metres away.”

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Feathers set to fly over birdlife

Is bird life at risk from wind turbines? Naturalist Geoff Sample gives his view.

THERE are areas of land in north Northumberland which Geoff Sample reckons are unmatched in the country for recording birdsong.

“There’s such a range of habitats here. There are outposts of low moorland from Doddington Moor across Ford Moss and Barmoor to Etal Moor with little pockets ranging from open moorland to boggy bits. It supports a tremendous variety of birdlife and, as a lot of those pockets are three to four miles away from main roads, it is very quiet for sound recording.”

Geoff is an internationally-recognised professional naturalist who lives near Wooler and has worked extensively in the Barmoor area which is threatened by proposals for wind turbines.

He says: “In winter, patches of woodland on these low lying ‘moors’ shelter a few interesting species – bullfinches, jays, nuthatch, woodcock, long-eared owl, goshawk and suchlike. The open heath provides hunting grounds for occasional visitors – merlin, hen harrier and peregrine – as well as its resident buzzards and kestrels. Depending on the vole population cycle, up to four short-eared owls might settle in for the winter.

“Then in spring, the open areas come alive with skylarks, meadow pipits, grasshopper warblers, cuckoo, curlew and snipe. The thickets become home to linnets, yellow-hammers and a whole range of warblers, including blackcap, white-throat, garden and willow warblers. Although none of these species is endangered, many are suffering long-term declines through man-made changes and loss of habitat.

“The Barmoor area remains a fine refuge for these traditional bird communities as well as a flyway between the extensive coastal habitats of Lindisfarne and Budle Bay and the river valleys and upland moors further inland. The windfarm proposal at Barmoor has the potential to continue the disruption and fragmentation of our few remaining wildlife habitats.

“Areas like this don’t get properly considered by planning departments. There are areas of heather, woodland and archaeological sites but none of them individually ‘scores’ highly on a national level. It’s more of a cumulative quality and an area to spend time in, so it suffers a bit.

“There’s a direct problem with bats and birds of prey, but it’s very difficult to get solid knowledge because the people who put the environmental statements together for the wind power developers underplay the situation and underestimate the ornithological and ecological interest in the area. They say, ‘no evidence’ but, actually, the evidence hasn’t been gathered. It’s difficult to prove any direct impact from wind turbines on any species.”

Page 2: Fighting for SOUL of county