Tuesday 27 October 2015

Urgent news - Cornwall is pretty much the same as it was two years' ago!

We were supposed to visit Cornwall in July, but my pancreas threw a wobbler two days before take-off. As the offending organ has been on its best behaviour for the last three months, we decided to have another go, and left a week ago today. We're back, and I'm delighted to report that nothing much has changed since our last visit, 26 long months ago. The roads still look like this:


The sea is still beautiful:


Though it can still prove treacherous to the unwary:


Gull Rock still stares disconsolately back at Trebarwith Strand, wondering, as it has for millennia, if the tide will ever recede far enough for it to be reunited with the mainland:


The winds atop Alex Tor still play havoc with hair-dos:


Old geezers still stare at rocks and wonder what it's all about:


Locals still stare at visitors and wonder what they're all about:


Gardens still look like this:


And television news somehow seems more bearable when viewed in the living room of a cottage, parts of which date back to the middle ages (though internal walls up to three feet thick tend to play havoc with broadband):

   
The only things that had really changed were an increased number of glaring solar panels in fields, and, inevitably, an absolute plague of new wind turbines, destroying many of the county's loveliest views: Cornwall has more of the horrible, bastard things than any other part of Britain. As for whoever recently erected the monstrous one directly beside the B3266, a few miles south of Camelford - may his private parts wither and drop off, may his crops fail, and may he be faced with a massive bill for dismantling the grotesque eyesore when some future government concludes that renewable energy is a con, that wind turbines are unaffordable, and that they are destroying the tourism industry on which the county depends. May the councillors and planning officers who gave permission for this and thousands of other turbines to be erected in Cornwall (there are proposals to build 4,000 more of the damned things) all end up sharing prison cells with the energy secretaries and "green" energy company executives who've done so much to deface this gloriously beautiful country - and Cornwall in particular. Their predecessors succeeded in destroying any number of Britain's medieval town centres - and they're now busy doing the same to the lovely bits in between. To hell with all of them.

7 comments:

  1. I'm relieved to learn you were simply dossing. The abrupt and lengthy radio silence had me worrying that something might have broken, or dropped off.

    Your curse on the windfarm magnates and facilitators can't come to fruition too soon. Though I was horrified to learn, when a rash of the damn things was planted in a particularly beautiful area near where I live, that they are each buried in many tons of concrete which, whatever fate may eventually befall them, will never be removed.

    So much for the hippies' love of the natural landscape. May they rot in hell.

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    1. I spent two long summers on the west coast of Scotland about ten years ago and met a very well-informed research scientist working with the Hydro-Electricity chaps. His view of wind turbines was clear:
      spectacularly inefficient in the generation and transmission of electricity; they create an enormous carbon debt in their construction; they create enormous ecological damage in the construction of the platforms (as noted by G Cooper) not just the concrete itself but in the roads and tracks built to get to the sites.
      Of course, the Blogmeister's is right; the visual horror and loss of tourist revenue are incalculable but diabolical.
      A plague indeed.

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    2. One day, I expect, wind farms will receive a whole chapter to themselves in a book entitled, "Myths and Legends of the Pre- Europistan Era".

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  2. Lovely photos.The sea is a vital part of Cornwall's history.As a nipper I experienced the roughest 'voyage' imaginable on the ferry from Penzance to the Isles of Scilly which partly explains all the shipwrecks in the area.Talk about freak waves It was so bad that a doctor was called to attend to my mother who later quipped that at first she was terrified the vessel would sink and then she wished it would.The two and a half hour trip turned into a nightmarish four hours.The return trip was all calm and peace,not a wind turbine in sight and a joy sailing into harbour.

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    1. We tend to stay away from the sea - they do say she be a cruel mistress, right enough, ah-har.

      Actually, that's a right old serious crossing you were on. We tend to confine ourselves to the five minute ferry ride between Rock and Padstow. Fortunately, they've built a nice big wind farm on the hills above Padstow, which can be seen from every angle and from miles away.

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  3. Did you take your guitar with you and engage in "duels" with local banjo players?

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    1. No, I travel to South-West Scotland for that sort of thing.

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