Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 38 by Kate Haslegrave

 

Kate is a photographer and has lived in Haworth for the past 20 years. She has been walking up on the moors for the past 10 years or so and one thing she has come to learn is that no two days out on the moors are ever the same. She has been blogging about life out on the Haworth & Stanbury moors for the past three years which you can read about at www.katietuppence.com

Turbine 38 Grinnel Stones  SD 96738 33218///plotter.encoding.goes

29 March 2025 My mission is to walk to the proposed site of wind turbine T38 which sits just south of the middle Walshaw Dean dam, and photograph what I see on the walk. I have thousands of photographs at home but there will be no cheating! Anyone could see what I see today.

I start from Stanbury, parking at Bully Trees. I shall follow the Pennine Way, passing Top Withens before dropping to the Walshaw Dean reservoirs, visiting the proposed site of T38 followed by a circular loop over Wadsworth Moor, to the hamlet of Walshaw then along the Calder/Aire link back to the reservoirs and then home.

It is a cloudy day with the sun showing itself through gaps in the clouds, offering some spectacular light bouncing across the landscape. I am treated to the long melody of the mistle thrush that arrived earlier this month, signifying the beginning of spring, but I did not see it, so no photograph. As usual there are plenty of geese bustling about on important goose business, so we start with them.

The grouse are as chatty as usual, but they aren’t doing anything photogenic. A cock pheasant is doing its best to look inconspicuous.

You can always spot meadow pipits at this time of year, often stood on drystone walls basking in the early morning sunshine. I haven’t heard the cuckoo yet, but they will arrive when the meadow pipits have a nest full of eggs.

As I drop down towards the reservoirs I’m treated to a cacophony of birdsong accompanied by spectacular aerial displays. Oystercatchers fly low to the water, their orange beaks and deep red eyes catching the glow of the sun, their shrill kleep! kleep! kleep! filling the air.

Higher up are the lapwings, fifty plus. They are so mesmerising to watch, flying in unison, the beat of their wings synchronised, waves of black and then white as they glide through the air. The black of their backs, followed by the white of their underbellies. Black-white, black-white, black-white. I could hear the whirring of their wings as they flew overhead. They don’t seem to have any set destination in mind, just synchronised flying from one end of the reservoir to the other. I wonder if there is any meaning to this in lapwing land.

Unlike the lapwings, I have got a destination in mind, and make my way up to the proposed site of T38 using the old shooting box as an anchor to guide me. The ground at the site feels arid, the matt grasses in need of a good downpour of rain, the only water underfoot being that retained by the sphagnum mosses.

I pause for a while looking across the reservoirs towards Boulsworth Hill. I feel like I’m stood in a natural amphitheatre, the landscape created millions of years ago by deltas and river beds, more recently carved out by the glaciers creating the steep bowl we can see today. I contour across the tussocky grass and rushes to the site of T38 near Grinnel Stones.

The chorus of the birdsong reverberating across the valley fills me with so much joy. I can hear curlews off in the distance, that soulful warbling, but I can’t see them yet. I can also hear the melancholic call of the golden plovers, somewhere up above me on the tops of the moors, and I won’t see them today.

As I stand and look out I try to imagine the wind turbines dotted across the landscape ahead of me and behind me. Surrounding me. Engulfing me.  “The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one, he said” randomly popped into my head and would be a song I sing this ominous song to myself for the rest of my walk. In 2020 the chances of wind turbines strutting across this precious landscape were a million to one. What are the chances now?

I watch the birds down at the reservoir below. Something catches my eye down on the reservoir bank. I get my camera out to zoom in and take a look, making a mental note to myself that I need to invest in a pair of bins. The scene ahead of me is one of beauty. Greylags, oystercatchers, lapwings, mallards, all grouped together. I feel the greylag is trying to command the attention of a classroom full of bored kids. I try to let the joy of the present calm my fear for the future.

I start  a circular loop across the top of the moor to see if I can find the curlews I heard. I’m also hoping for some buzzards, and sure enough, I spot one as I walked back towards the reservoirs from Walshaw. I often see them along this stretch: I once counted five together. They move smoothly and my camera stops one in flight.

Almost under the buzzard’s supervision is a large flock of curlews feeding. There must be be fifty of them. “So, this is where you’re hiding!”.

As I round the corner heading back towards the reservoirs, I smile to see the lapwings are still doing laps of the reservoir, the oystercatchers are still screaming their little lungs out, and the geese are still honking.

And I think to myself, “I wish we could live harmoniously with the wildlife, us humans. I wish we could find a balance.” I worry. As I’m sure many of us do. I worry that we are not doing enough. Because we, the humans, are the only ones that can put right what we have done wrong.

  

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This is the 34th in a series of 65 guest blogs on each of the wind turbines which Richard Bannister plans to have erected on Walshaw Moor. Turbines 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 14, 16, 17, 21, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 40, 42, 43, 44, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 65 have already been described. To see all the blogs – click here.

 

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