Logan joins fight to have pylon plan kicked into touch

Published on Wednesday 24 August 2005 01:06

THE rugby star Kenny Logan led a march to the National Wallace Monument, near Stirling, yesterday in protest at plans for a 137-mile line of electricity pylons through some of the Scotland's most sensitive countryside.

The giant pylons, some nearly as tall as the 220ft monument, would carry electricity from proposed new wind farms.

However, opponents - including Logan, whose parents have a farm within sight of the monument, at Powis Mains, near Blairlogie - say they would ruin the landscape and could pose a cancer threat to children.

Logan left a meeting in Edinburgh yesterday to lead the march of more than 200 protesters from his parents' farm to the landmark. He told them: "A pylon in the garden means cancer in the house. It's not just because this is my home that I am protesting. I want to protect everyone's homes."

Calling for a public inquiry, he said Scotland's landscape was being ruined by pylons and wind farms, and added:

"Why do they need these big cables when wind farms produce so little electricity? I believe there is a hidden agenda here, and it'll be nuclear power stations next."

Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) wants to run the transmission line the 137 miles from Beauly, in Inverness-shire, to Denny, in Stirlingshire, to take power from new wind farms. The height of the pylons would range from 138ft to more than 200ft, and part of the route would cut through the Cairngorms National Park.

Campaigners have urged the company to put the cable underground but it says this would cost between six and 12 times as much.

SSE says the new transmission route would replace much of an existing line and claims its 320 million scheme is needed to meet green energy targets set by ministers and the European Union.

However, the proposals have caused a public outcry.

Alison Grave, 49, from Glenfarg, Perthshire, who helped to organise yesterday's protest, said: "William Wallace inspired people to follow him for the love of the land. We are here, too, for the love of the land and to try to protect what we have."

The mountaineer and author Cameron McNeish, who is president of the Ramblers Association Scotland, joined the march and called for a fundamental review of UK electricity transmission strategy.

He said there was a huge threat that rural Scotland would be turned into "an industrial landscape" of wind farms and wires. He said: "We have to get away from the notion of large generators transporting power over vast distances, with giant pylons goose-stepping across the landscape from Wester Ross across to Beauly and down to Denny, and learn to use technology creatively.

"We need to combat climate change in a way that will not sacrifice one of our greatest resources, the natural landscape, for the benefit of power-gluttons south of the Border. Westminster is out to destroy Scotland's landscape while we pay for it."

During yesterday's protest, a barrage-balloon hovered about 200ft above the ground - the same height as the planned power line.

Peter Pearson, a spokesman for the protest group Stirling Before Pylons, said the pylons would come within a few hundreds yards of the Wallace Monument and he called on Stirling Council to object to the "poorly thought out" proposals.