Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 33  by John Page and Nick MacKinnon

John Page. Photo: Author

John Page was born in the West Riding, a proud Yorkshireman and was taught to play cricket left-handed “ ’cos it flummoxes t’ bowler, and buggers up t’ field.” He went to university in London and Leeds, and enjoyed (most of the time) attempting to teach young people that there’s a big wide world beyond the Colne and Worth Valleys. He also taught future captains of industry and government at the United World College of SE Asia in Singapore for four years. Except Antarctica, John has travelled and climbed extensively on all the world’s continents, with friends and with Hil, his wife of 44 years. Still very active in his seventies, retirement from paid employment was the best career move that he ever made. 

Photo: Lydia MacKinnon

Nick MacKinnon is a freelance teacher of Maths, English and Medieval History, and lives above Haworth, in the last inhabited house before Top Withens = Wuthering Heights. In 1992 he founded the successful Campaign to Save Radio 4 Long Wave while in plaster following a rock-climbing accident on Skye. His poem ‘The metric system’ won the 2013 Forward Prize. His topical verse and satire appears in the Spectator, and his puzzles and problems in the Sunday Times and American Mathematical Monthly. Email: nipmackinnon@gmail.com 

Turbine 33 Roms Hill  SE 00784 32680 ///dramatic.currently.backtrack

Map of the John Page’s traverse of CEP from T1 Grey Stones to T33 Roms Hill and the bus stop at Bedlam. Map: Nick MacKinnon

On 29 April 2025, Calderdale Wind Farm Ltd launched a six-week period of what they call “Non-statutory Public Consultation” into Calderdale Energy Park. We start this blog with two accounts of the Oxenhope consultation on 17 May 2025 and finish with John Page’s traverse of the length of the site from T1 to T33. It is on these walks that what we now call the Walshaw Turbines Research Group have acquired the intimate knowledge of the site which CWF Ltd so entirely lack.

First, John Page talks to Tom Andrews of Cavendish Consulting who may have under-estimated the steel and knowledge of his inquisitor, because John got him to sing like a bird…

John Page at the Haworth Public Consultation

It was a beautiful day as I drove over to Oxenhope, somewhat resentful that I was going to have to spend an hour or so pondering on the banalities of the new CEP propaganda. I had prepared a long list of straight, but central, questions about the process of building CEP. I looked at the various information boards and maps about the proposal (blow-ups of the glossy literature already posted through my letter box at home and somehow posted as an advert on my Facebook account). And then out of the half dozen or so young people standing about with dangling name tags I chose to engage with Tom (Andrews, he later told me.)

Over the next hour or so Tom listened to my questions politely and, as best he could, he attempted to answer them. He said CEP are “back at the beginning again”, at the very start of the wind farm process because of a change of government had different criteria to work from. They and are having to look at their original brash proposal completely afresh.  “We’ve just started from scratch again …

I asked about the turbine location map. He admitted the one today was different to the original published one because there’d been a “typo”. I asked for the first time, “Is the location of the turbines now fixed?” During the next hour the answer to this simple question changed several times. Initially he said this was the finished map, until I pointed out that much of the survey work was incomplete, peat depth definitions had changed and that it was the nesting season for the ground surveys that were needed to confirm or negate “interpolated data sets”. He added: “When practicalities were pointed out to CEP about the unsuitability of various sites for individual turbines then there could be small adjustments.” Tom told me that if, later in the consultation process and because of the onsite surveying, certain sites were deemed to be totally inappropriate then they would be scrubbed from the project. When quizzed on what he thought that the final number would be he reckoned that the final proposal to be submitted (if at all) would be for an energy park of between 26 and 29 “new breed” turbines. He thought that a definitive number would be available around November 2025.

The access points were to be into Walshaw Moor at Cock Hill on the Wainstalls Road and from the north from Laneshaw Bridge on a new 3 km dirt road that would navigate the steep incline by zig zags to the north of the energy park. “Obviously all the narrow unsuitable current roads would be widened, strengthened and upgraded” and these routeways were currently being discussed with local authorities.

Tom has no idea where the onsite cabling would go, nor how deep, because they didn’t have enough information. Discussions were ongoing about whether there would be a battery energy storage system (BESS) at all, and certainly they had “no idea where it would be located”.

Clearly where the off-site power would go will be decided by which of the four substations is chosen. “Still collecting information to get an overview.” But I was told that “It all goes into the National Grid”. It doesn’t; three of the substations belong to DNOs not NG.

Tom said that that “the local and on-site sandstone would not be used”, but “where the aggregate would be sourced and the delivery routes are under review.

I asked about physical turbines, type, source, manufacturer as this has repercussions on lots of things, not least which route if they come into the country (Liverpool, Hull, or Southampton). He was unsure on all these points: “Under review.”

When I suggested that it was obvious that Walshaw Moor was proving to be a difficult site to develop at the scale they had originally intended my remark got a knowing smile. I said, “If Walshaw Moor is proving a difficult location, then the alternative sites that they were supposed to investigate must have been terrible”. Tom couldn’t give me any alternatives investigated. I suggested that it was “the perfect marriage; a large integral piece of moorland willing to be sold by one landowner to a foreign investor with large amounts of money to invest.” I read his smile as cynical, and he said, “No comment.”  At the Hebden Bridge consultation my wife asked why Walshaw Moor had been chosen over other sites. The only reply was “It is a very windy location”. I conclude that no other sites have been looked at in any detail.

Tom confirmed that, although there might have to be footpath diversions. He was unsure which ones because the review was still ongoing, but that CEP would remain as open access land under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act.

I questioned Tom about the £75 million Community Fund. This is estimated on the power produced, and although it will be lower now because of the reduced number of turbines, it ought not to be lower as the generated power would be the same as that produced by the original 65. Tom thought that the money would almost all go to Calderdale, not the other impacted local authorities, “but there would be a further compensation corridor, perhaps up to 50 metres either side of however the power was taken from CEP to whichever substation they choose to connect to.”

He said the 300,000 trees that had been in the original proposal for the Community Fund have been scrapped as an idea. Tom said that “trees were deemed inappropriate for flood prevention”.

Did CEP have a financial plan that could be scrutinised by the public? He said that they obviously have a financial plan, having already spent well into double figures of millions of pounds so far but had no idea how to access it. He did know theoretically about Carbon Credits, Biodiversity Net Gain Credits and about the Peatland Code. But where they fitted into any financial plan he didn’t know. Nor did he know if allied to the wind farm scheme there were any plans for rewetting the moor; any restoration programme; any plans to undo any of Mr Bannister’s original shooting estate management.

To be fair to a very polite Tom, he presented most of his answers with “You won’t like this but…”; “on-going”; “under review”; “in the light of further information we will consider”.

He was a pleasant 30-year-old geography graduate whose role he told me was “to organise the non-statutory consultations and make sure that they ran smoothly”.  I asked Tom why Mr Christian Egal and members of the “top team” weren’t there. “This Public Consultation is just part of the programme to allow the general public to ask us questions, so the senior people weren’t needed”. So, I came out of the non-statutory public consultation not a lot wiser about any concrete plans for CEP, but Tom was rather clear on the timings. “If all goes to CEP plan, approval would be given by Mr Miliband or his successor by Autumn 2027.”  Boots on the ground soon after. I asked if the construction teams and unspecified turbines were on order. Tom gave a wry smile.

 

Nick MacKinnon at the Oxenhope consultation

Nick MacKinnon started talking to Alison, who was quickly joined by Sue, and then Harriet completed the consultant doughnut around the unexpectedly sticky jam.

 

Layout design process

Nick Mackinnon started by asking if the design process for the layout shown in the maps had been careful. Alison said it had been.

NM: “What was the hierarchy of design criteria for the layout.

Alison: “Peat and Hydrology were primary … access and cultural heritage of course … habitats …  but no criterion was a trump card.

NM: “Why were public safety and construction worker safety not among primary design criteria.

Alison: “Public safety and construction worker were not trump cards in the design process. No criterion had a trump card.

[Sue came over now, NM thought in response to a panic signal from Alison.]

NM: “I was asking Alison if public and construction worker safety had been primary design criteria in the layout you have published.

Sue: “What do you mean?”.

NM: “Public safety and construction worker safety being paramount in the layout design process seem an obvious requirement of any careful design process and that point of view, commonly held, does not need to be explained.

Sue: “Give an example of public safety.

NM: “Turbine 21 is less than 60 metres from the Pennine Way. The blades will overhang the footpath and represent a blade throw and ice throw threat to the walkers using the path.  General Electric recommend a setback of “topple height plus 10%” relative to public areas and this would be 220 metres, not less than 60 metres.

Sue: “Why is that a matter of public safety?

NM: “It would surely be considered as a matter of safety in a careful layout design process.

Sue: “It isn’t unsafe. It is you who say it is unsafe. It is a matter of opinion.”

NM: “Do you seriously think that is how the Planning Inspectorate will see it?

(NM shows a detail of the CEP Access map)

NM: “Even your cartographer found T21 to be too close to the Pennine Way. Look how the gold and yellow line leaves the OS dashes to get round the T21 marker. Even your line is scared of the turbine.

Detail of CEP access map showing the consultant’s green and gold line leaving the OS Pennine Way dashes to swerve round T21. Screenshot: Nick MacKinnon 29/04/25

Harriet now suggested we were going round in circles on this point.

NM: “Was T22 not considered to be dangerous to construction workers?” (Shows map of T22 site in Black Clough)

T22 is in Black Clough and cannot be reached from above. Map: Nick MacKinnon

Sue: “Why is it dangerous?

NM: “Evidently construction worker safety was not a paramount criterion in the design process. To reach T22 the 300 tonne components would have to descent a gradient of 26% on an aggregate track. Had this point not been observed during the design process?

Alison: “Perhaps the lorries could come into Black Clough from the side along the contours from … somewhere.”

Harriet: “We are going round in circles…

[Alison has been connected to CWF Ltd “for two years”. It was alarming how quickly she got out of her depth on what are simple matters of gradient and track layout in defence of a turbine position which is patently infeasible. Why did she not stick to “the layout is merely indicative”?]

The layout map, hydrology map and habitat maps are fictions

Sue: “The layout is not where the turbines will actually be. It is where turbines might be. It is a snapshot of a design process.

Alison: “They are somewhere near where a turbine might end up, but you shouldn’t worry about where they actually are. It’s an impression. The positions are merely indicative.

NM: “There is nothing on any of these maps that says they are fictions, and I should know because I had them all corrected on 1 May 2025, and I have a thank you letter from Christian Egal for bringing the errors to his attention. Please may I have your surnames?

Sue: “I’m not going to give you my surname.”

Alison: “No. We don’t give surnames.

NM: “I‘ll give you mine. I’m Nick MacKinnon and my group WTRG write a fortnightly blog on your project on a turbine-by-turbine basis. We have documented a long period of incompetence in your company CWF Ltd from September 2023-October 2024. At the moment WTRG describe your behaviour with respect to the CEP layout as “systemic carelessness”. CWF Ltd have never denied either “incompetence” or “systemic carelessness” and they have been given opportunities to do so on many occasions. The problem for CWF, and what makes their carelessness “systemic” is that whenever they hastily correct their materials in response to our blogs, they make even worse mistakes. It must aggravate the investors.”

Hydrology

NM: “Alison said that hydrology was a primary design criterion. Why is the hydrology map wrong about flow out of the Greave Clough catchment?

Sue: “In what way is it wrong?

NM: “Did the hydrology team make effective site visits?

Sue: “Yes. The hydrology team made site visits.

NM: “They cannot have been effective because at this point the Greave Clough catchment runoff is intercepted by a sluice and a tunnel takes the water to Widdop Reservoir. This is not shown on your hydrology map, yet Alison says hydrology was a primary design criterion, second to peat. She didn’t even mention public and worker safety among her trump cards.

(Shows map of the correct drainage out of GC catchment)

The Greave Clough catchment is intercepted by a sluice and sent in a tunnel to Widdop Reservoir.  Map: Nick MacKinnon (red correction) to CEP hydrology map detail 1/5/25 version.

Alison: “I think the hydrology map shows watercourses and the hydrology team cannot be expected to show a tunnel as tunnels are underground and not watercourses as such.

NM: “So the hydrology map was not the result of effective site visits, nor does it reflect the hydrology in a crucial catchment. It’s just colouring in.

Sue: “The hydrology team are not here today.

Greave Clough sluice and the tunnel to Widdop reservoir. Photo: Nigel Griffiths

NM: “If the hydrology team had made effective site visits they would have discovered this (showed photo of GC sluice and tunnel) and given a correct account of the drainage in GC to the design team, because hydrology was a primary design criterion along with peat, well ahead of public safety and worker safety, according to Alison, and certainly safety seem to have been completely neglected. The Greave Clough sluice focusses the whole runoff from its catchment. It will be overwhelmed in a storm and then run over the top, down the spillway and straight to Hebden Water. This is one of the principal mechanisms by which CEP can cause catastrophic floods in Hebden Bridge.

[NM judged neither consultant had ever see a photograph of Greave Clough sluice.]

Sue: “We haven’t got a hydrologist here today.”  (Harriet drifted off about here)

Aggregate

NM: “What are the tracks and foundations going to made of?

Sue: “What do you mean?

NM: “Wind farm tracks are made of crushed rock, and so is the concrete for foundations. The scoping report says the rock may come from onsite borrow pits and this will save the environmental costs of importing stone.

Alison: “Yes! There will be borrow pits!

[The exclamation marks are to show indicate a sense of Alison’s relief at finding something she really knew about. Alison had been working for CWF Ltd “for about two years”, so was party to the “borrow pits” error in the original Scoping Report of September 2023. Elsewhere in the room, the borrow pits error was admitted. The stone must come from beyond West Yorkshire.]

NM: “But the onsite rock is too weak, porous and susceptible to frost to be used as a roadstone or for technical concrete.”

Sue: “That’s just your opinion.” [Sue has been working for CWF since January 2025.]

NM: “It is the opinion of the five West Yorkshire Councils who publish an annual Aggregate Assessment and have done so since 2012. The problem with West Yorkshire aggregate is an economic imperative for the councils. The facts about weakness, porosity and susceptibility to frost are also written on the notes of the British Geological Survey map to the area. Has nobody at CWF Ltd looked at the aggregate assessments or the BGS map?

Sue: “I don’t know. We don’t have to check the rock yet.”

NM: “This is a public consultation held under Gunning Principles and the public must be able to give “intelligent consideration” to your proposals. I am a member of the public who cannot do any solid calculations about the stone deliveries until you suggest where the aggregate is coming from, so I cannot give “intelligent consideration” even to a matter as simple as what you are going to build CEP from.

[Elsewhere Stewart, an electrician, had asked about the aggregate. “The first thing you do on a project is work out where the materials are coming from”. He was told the aggregate might come from onsite borrow pits. He said, “Sometimes a builder will try to fob you off with gritstone sawdust on a driveway. It turns to slush in a week. Gritstone aggregate is only any use as a filler. The aggregate must come from somewhere else. Where?” He got no answer. Outside he was furious. John Page asked about the aggregate and was told that it would all be imported.]

NM: “So you have completed a careful design process without doing anything at all to establish where the rock is coming from.”

Sue: “It’s just rock. We don’t have to consider rock at this stage of the proposal.

NM: “But for some people the vast amount of rock that must be delivered will be the primary effect on them, and they cannot give “intelligent consideration” to the proposals without knowing if rock is being imported and from where.”

Peat depth map

NM: “Alison told me earlier that peat and hydrology were the leading determinants of this layout to which the public should be able to give “intelligent consideration” under Gunning. Why then is the peat map blank in this area.

CEP peat depth map with highlights added by NM showing the blank area and the proximity to the Greave Clough sluice. Map: Nick MacKinnon on CEP map (2/5/25 version)

Sue: “We haven’t got any infrastructure on that blank area.

NM: “The blank area is directly above the Greave Clough sluice and is crucial in hydrology.

Sue: “That’s just your opinion.” (I observed at this point to Sue that she kept saying “just” about things that were not “just”).

NM: “It is a matter of fact that the blank area is above the GCS. It is a matter of fact that the blank area was caused by the 2022 probing failure and that the colouring around the failure is also likely to be wrong. (Shows the 2023 scoping report map with probing crosses). Why was the peat survey not completed?

The blank area in the 2023 Scoping Report map which shows the extent of the probing failure. The colouring around the blank area is unreliable because it depends on little probing, and much of the map here is an artefact of the algorithm. The red boundary around failed probing and dubious colouring encloses about 14% of the whole Greave Clough catchment. Map: Nick MacKinnon

Sue: “Because it might have been too dangerous to do it or the weather might not have been right or any number of reasons.

NM: “You are both experts in environmental science. How long would it take to complete the survey.”

Sue, Alison: “We don’t know.

NM: “About a day. I have surveyed the area myself but only on a transect because I had the dog with me. So you are saying that you have not had a single “safe” day between September 2023 and 21 February 2025, when you finalised this layout, to finish the peat survey?

Sue: “How do you know we finalised the layout on that date.”

NM: “Because “Layout 210225-41t” is written on all your maps.

Sue: “That’s just your interpretation of what is written on the maps. The layout is not finalised. It is a snapshot of an iterative design process.”

NM: “Did the blank area on the peat survey have any effect on the layout finalised on 21 Feb?

Sue: “No, because there is no infrastructure in the blank area.”

NM: “But there was a turbine T38 between T37 and T39 on the blank area and you moved it.

Sue: “What evidence do you have for that?

NM: “Because the turbine numbering is sequential and T38 was not on the maps that you published on 29 April but T42 was, but T38 was on the corrected maps you published on 1 May and it is in the previous position of T42 where it is out of sequence.

Sue: “The layout numbering is not sequential and you are arguing about just a typographical error.”

NM: “It is a fact that the numbering is sequential. It wasn’t “just” a typo. You finished the layout discussion on 21 Feb and sent the coordinates of the turbines to Natural Power. They made a faithful map with no T38 and a T42 on 14 March. Those maps were loaded to your website. Then somebody noticed that there was a T42 and no T38. New maps were made by Natural Power on 18 April, just 11 days before launch with T38 where T42 had been. But somebody failed to load the corrected maps. I expect they have been sacked.  This matter of the wrong maps is a further demonstration of the incompetence of the CEP layout design process.”

Sue: “T38 was moved but not because of the peat survey.

[There comes a point when intellectual self-respect demands accommodation with the facts. For Sue, this was that point. It is intolerable that CWF Ltd put Sue in this position.]

Alison: “But it says on the website that the location of T38 has not been changed. Oh!

[Silence. It took all my self-control not to break it.]

Sue: “T38 was moved from between T37 and T39 but not because the peat survey was blank.

NM: “It is implausible to say that without advancing a reason more compelling than the blank peat map. What was the reason it was moved?

Sue: “I don’t have to tell you that. There could be many reasons.

NM: “Alison says the primary design criteria were peat and hydrology but you say it wasn’t peat so it must have been hydrology because if it was something less important to flooding (access, culture, aerodynamics … ) you’d tell me. You agree with me that the turbines on the slope above Greave Clough are likely to cause a flood in Hebden Bridge?

Sue: “There are other reasons we might have moved T38”.

NM: “Peat is important to hydrology and flooding. What percentage of the Greave Clough catchment do you think was not properly surveyed in 2022 and is still not properly surveyed over three years later? It is inside the red line on the map.

Sue: “I don’t know.”

NM: “14%. I think we can agree that you are both sufficiently senior to have been present at the meeting at which the layout was finalised.

Sue: “It isn’t finalised. It’s a snapshot of an ongoing process.

NM: “That you were both present at the meeting that finalised the layout for the purposes of this public consultation.

Alison: “I was at the meeting.”

Sue: “I was too.

Electricity

NM: “Where is the substation going to be?

Sue: “We don’t know. There are four possible locations.

NM: “There are two substations in the connection. At the grid end is DNO at Elland, Bradford West or Rochdale or an unbuilt NG one “near Leeds”. I am asking about the onsite substation at your end that transforms the onsite voltage from 33 kV to 132 kV for onward transmission.

Sue: “We don’t know where that will be. No decision has been made.

NM: “The battery will be next to the substation, won’t it?

Sue: “That’s just your opinion.”

NM: “It is also the opinion of your consultants Natural Power. In the scoping report they say the battery will be close to the substation to reduce the length of cable runs and make the site efficient.

SueWe don’t know where the battery is relative to the substation, and we don’t know where the substation will be.

NM: “But in the embedded capacity register of Electricity North West CWF Ltd have specified the position of their substation to the nearest metre. It is this farmhouse in Shackleton. (Shows ECR and photo of farmhouse).

Detail of CWF Ltd entry in the embedded capacity register of Electricity NW showing location of the substation at Shackleton grid reference 398318, 429563.  Screenshot: 19/05/25 Nick MacKinnon

Sue: “That’s just your opinion of where the substation will be.

NM: “But this is your document, not mine.”

Sue: “You said “onsite substation”, but Shackleton is offsite. There may be an onsite substation somewhere else.

NM: “And will that connect with the published substation at a voltage of 132 kV?

Sue:It might do.”  [Since Sue clearly was aware that CWF Ltd had long ago published the Shackleton position, I couldn’t be bothered to hunt down this ingenuous and absurd line of defence as it was manifestly ad lib. The fact that CWF Ltd have their nominated site substation in an offsite position is indeed curious. More curious is that neither Sue nor Alison know one of the very few concrete facts external to the site that CWF Ltd have ever put in the public domain.]

Gunning Principles

NM: “Do you know the Gunning Principles for public consultation?

[The Gunning Principles are so key to public consultation that a leading guide to them is published by PinsentMason who are engaged by CWF Ltd.]

Sue: “Explain what you mean.”

Alison: “I know what the Gunning Principles are. What do you mean?

NM: “There are four principles. Principle 2 is that you give enough information to allow the public to make “intelligent consideration” of your proposals. Principle 3 is that adequate time must be given for consideration and response. You have told me that the maps are not maps of any proposal and we agree the peat map is incomplete, and you didn’t deny that the hydrology map does not show the correct flow out of Greave Clough. So now I have to check all your maps with fieldwork, and I can’t because the moor is covered in red-listed birds until mid-August. I cannot give intelligent consideration to your proposal during the period of public consultation because you haven’t told me what it is and all the important maps you used to specify the proposal are wrong or incomplete or fictions that you call “snapshots”.

Sue: “What do you want from this meeting?

NM: “I want to collect further evidence that your design process is incompetent and that the way you are conducting the public consultation is incompetent under the Gunning Principles. I am doing this because your proposals will destroy breeding assemblages of curlews, lapwings and golden plovers which do better on Walshaw Moor than anywhere in the north of England or Scotland.

Sue: “We will deal with the birds in an environmental statement”.

NM: “So, what I have learned today is that you did move T38 and the reason was even more serious than that the peat survey wasn’t complete underneath it, and you won’t say what it is. You confirmed my evidence-based claim that the hydrologists did not make effective site visits because you’d never seen a photo of the Greave Clough sluice, and you advanced the excuse that the hydrology is incorrect because the water goes through a tunnel. You say you don’t know where the aggregate is coming from, and you don’t even know what the geology of the aggregate will be. I judge that you had never seen a photograph of the Greave Clough sluice. I judge the embedded capacity register document was news to you, so the fact that nobody has told you is evidence that the layout meeting did not have access to significant information, as was the case with the peat map. We have established that public safety and construction worker safety were simply irrelevant as criteria in the design process. I am persuaded that you are sometimes sincere when you say that you don’t know, but some of the things you say you don’t know are so important that nobody,  neither you,  me nor the Project Director himself could, in the absence of this information, give intelligent consideration to the proposal;  so it certainly should not have been put forward for Public Consultation under the Gunner principles, and the missing information should also have been used by CEP during the layout decision, had it been a safe and competent process.”

Sue: “That’s just what you say.”

NM: “It is also what our lawyers will say.

[In other conversations the CEP representatives made admissions under less pressure than Sue and Alison (for example over the movement of T38). Their defence of hopeless positions was an unacceptable tax on their self-respect, because as we have seen another CEP rep was singing like a bird to John Page. I am sorry that Sue and Alison were put in this position by CWF Ltd, who should have sent senior people to the Public Consultation.]

 

Grey Stones to Bedlam: a traverse of Calderdale Energy Park by John Page

An erratic boulder on Grey Stones, symbol of a new world order and old school chaos at CEP. Photo: John Page

I did my blog walk before CEP was announced, as the Editor likes to have some in reserve to cover the nesting season. To avoid confusion, the turbine numbering has been changed to fit CEP.

I suppose we all knew that once Mr Trump became President of the United States for the second time the world was about to witness some very major changes. I remember nearly 60 years ago reading Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf in Heckmondwike Public Library over several tea-times on my way home from school. And as a precocious teenager, just starting my A level History course, I was bewildered. Surely if the British leadership had taken this book seriously back in the 1930s, then they could possibly have prevented what followed. Vladimir Putin has done the same thing in recent times. I was in Kas, in southern Turkey, searching out long abandoned Lycian city states (another defeated empire) when the Russians invaded Ukraine. It wasn’t, sadly, a surprise. Putin had already written a long, detailed public essay about his ambitions for Russia to restore the old USSR to its former glory, and his forays into Georgia and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 were just the start. So, the 24 February 2022 invasion and attack on Kyiv should not have been a surprise to anyone, and neither should Mr Trump’s policies. After all, even the U.K. Prime Minister has acknowledged that “Globalisation doesn’t work for a lot of working people.

Heady stuff then to think about as I set off on my traverse of the site of what is now Calderdale Energy Park from its western point on Grey Stones Hill to Bedlam Farm.

I set off on my walk in dry, sunny conditions there were a couple of other important thoughts that I wondered about.  Where do all the component parts for this industrial estate come from? In this age of very complex supply chains no doubt all the hundreds of bits and pieces will come from an integrated web of international suppliers. One can’t just say that a turbine blade comes from a Siemens factory in Hull or a Tesla battery comes from its factory in Shanghai. What about the rare earth metals or the aluminium or the toughened glass that are so vital for making all of the very diverse components in the first place? Where are they sourced? And how will President Trump’s new random tariffs affect the cost of manufacturing and transporting them? And perhaps 45,000 lorry loads of limestone aggregate for the new trackways and foundations to be brought in from the Dales, 50 miles away? Diesel is expected to go up in price quite significantly. Peat experts are beginning to observe that limestone won’t be allowed on a protected peatland, so the rock may have to come from even further away.

With a reported budget of £500,000,000 (2024 published figures) to build the whole project I suspect CWF will now need to spend a lot more money to fulfil its stated objectives. Considering all the current global uncertainty, and the strength of argument put forward by those campaigning against this windfarm, I wonder if the decision-makers at CWF might realise that this highly speculative venture is not going to provide the return for its investors.

As I walk just north of the wonderful gritstone edge of The Scout on a compass bearing linking T1 to T4, I also wonder what Mr Miliband is thinking about all of this. Because of its size the proposed CEP is now classified as a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project, and whether it gets planning permission or not will be determined by Miliband, his successors, and their advisors at DESNZ, not by the local planning department in Calderdale. It is imperative that these politicians, special advisors and civil servants are made aware that Walshaw Moor is not any green field site. The characteristics of this specific peatland environment should render CWF Ltd’s  application (if it happens at all) totally inappropriate. The costs alone for this project will inevitably now spiral due to Mr Trump’s economic “plan”. So, the bean counters and money folk behind the project should be working on their spreadsheets and conducting a thorough cost/benefit analysis. And I would have thought that, even using my 1967 O level in old fashioned mathematics, the sums for building on Walshaw Moor wouldn’t add up. It’s acknowledged that there are more appropriate (and much cheaper) locations for a wind farm in the country; locations that would still give the financial backers a return on their money. And even though Mr Bannister wouldn’t get his bonanza of millions of pounds he’s already been paid a lot of money while the fact-finding process of CWF has been ongoing. If it were up to me, I’d get out now, only having spent a few millions, and then plough my money into a much less controversial site than Walshaw Moor. I’d argue that the whole venture up to now has been a steep, but invaluable, learning curve for all those involved in CWF Ltd while acknowledging that lots and lots of mistakes have been made along the way. I’d accept that Walshaw Moor was a failed prototype campaign (as Musk, Jobs et al. accepted after their own failures in development in their respective fields of innovation) and I’d move on, and let Mr Bannister just focus now on rethinking his retail business under this new, uncertain socio-economic, political world order.

CEP would cast long shadows across the Grey Stones. Photo: John Page

But despite all these dilemmas whizzing around in my head this was a delightful and joyous day. There was not a cloud in the sky and despite there being a slight chill in the sunshine, there was hardly a breeze. I’d been dropped off by my wife almost at the county boundary to then make the arcing ascent to Grey Stone Hill at 462 metres. And there, standing on the tallest rock, I could survey the great swathe of Walshaw Moor and the wide and protected land of which it forms the centre. I wrote in my first blog – click here – about the wonders of Dove Stones and of the apparent wall of turbines that I would see from the Slaughter Stone on Lad Law if CWF was ever built. I was now in their midst, with T1 looming over the magical Grey Stones, no doubt destroying the peace and tranquillity of this place. But on this day the only sounds were of the grouse, the lapwings and a small skein of Canada geese that were flying low over to the Gorple Reservoirs.

Normally I wouldn’t use my Silva compass (with a bubble in it) to navigate these moors in bright sunshine, with visibility for miles, but I wanted to follow the exact line of a possible road and electrical cabling that would link T1 to T4 and on to Bedlam.

The cable duct line from T1 to T4. The ground tips to the left and drains into Greave Clough. Photo: John Page

Mr Bannister’s men have been hard at work. There are quad bike tracks to service the medicated grit trays laid. Grouse need to consume about 35 grams of this grit each month, so each tray needs to start off with about 500 grams in it to feed a pair of grouse over a seven-month period, and they need to be checked regularly.

It’s not easy walking, but I don’t care. It’s dry, and over the years the moor has been managed, so  the vegetation is only just beginning to spring back to life again. I arrived at the deeply incised Greave Clough with dry feet. On this day the stream is “nobbut a babbling brook”, but I’ve seen it in very different conditions when it’s been a raging torrent during heavy rain. So with the added impermeable infrastructure of CEP the overland flow, the incredibly rapid runoff, of the Clough’s catchment will accelerate the potential flooding down the valley and, ultimately, will add to the flood risk in Hebden Bridge, despite the £90 million that the Environment Agency say will be spent on flood defences. These, by deliberate design, will not have to allow for CEP. The EA say it is for the developer to prove that CEP will not add to the flood in an extreme event.

Dropping down into Greave Clough from T4; the trees in the middle are where Lower Good Greave Farm would have been. Photo: John Page

The next section of my traverse has been well documented, so I’ll whiz through the next section faster than my hungry body could walk. I took the big estate track from the sluice and weir, which had been built by Halifax Corporation Water Board last century to control the clough’s flow down to Graining and ultimately into Hebden Water. There were ambitions to flood Hardcastle Crags and create another reservoir. I, for one, can thank the late Lord Savile for saving the valley from being drowned when he donated it to the National Trust. If only Mr Bannister could be so public spirited with Walshaw Moor.

A discarded signpost. Another metaphor for uncaring owners of this landscape. Photo: John Page

There’s a lovely short-cut across the hillside to the derelict farm at Cascade. It takes in old stone workings and a tumbled down wall. I sit there for a bite to eat and think of Fay Godwin’s atmospheric photographs that accompany Ted Hughes’s poetry in “Remains of Elmet”.  What scathing poetry Ted have written about this malevolent wind farm caper!

The Word That Space Breathes/ through tumbled walls/ is accompanied/ by lost jawbones of men/ and lost fingerbones of women/ in the chapel of cloud// and the walled, horizon-woven choir/ of old cares/ darkening back to heather.// The huge music/ of sightlines/ from every step of slopes// The Messiah/ of opened rock. Ted Hughes

On the major tracks again, I trundled over the Walshaw Dean Middle Reservoir dam, up Dean Gate to High Rakes and then across the moor to the well-constructed track, where it crosses the western tributary of Rowshaw Clough, a track that is still not on the CEP maps, for some reason…

Even Mr Richard Bannister’s 2002 Ozymandias stone will suffer the turbine flicker of CEP. Photo: John Page

The last time I was here was with my teacher mates, Mary and John, measuring peat depth with an avalanche probe in thick mist and heavy drizzle – click here. What a contrast with today!

From the Haworth Old Road I looked across to Bedlam Hill and wondered about which route to take. I decided to take the easy South Pennine Pack Horse Trail up to Cock Hill and walk along the main road to where the road turns a sharp corner for its gentle incline down to Pecket Well. Bedlam Hill is right next to the road and, along with T 33, has already been bagged for for these Walshaw Turbine blogs, but I’d kept casting my eye across to its neighbour, Bedlam Farm as I walked up from White Hole.

The Retreat at Bedlam Farm. It costs £2361 to rent for a week in mid-April and over £3000 in July with Sykes Cottages. It will be besieged by wind turbines if CEP is built. Photo: John Page

So that was my traverse of the whole of Walshaw Moor. A glorious day out in wonderful weather. All that was left was to catch the 500 Brontëbus down into Hebden Bridge and then walk back up home, and I had my bus pass ready for the driver.  But, before that, a small red car stopped. The passenger cleared a space on the back seat and invited me in. They were a lovely young couple (he from Bristol, she from Wakefield) who were touring the area and looking for Hardcastle Crags. And they dropped me I the NT carpark while they went on a wander through the woods to Gibson Mill and back to their car.

And those bright, thoughtful young things are now better informed about the problems of building a massive wind farm on peatland that has nationally recognised and protected status and, along with their mates, they’ve promised to sign the parliamentary petition against windfarms on protected peatland.

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This is the 36th in a series of guest blogs originally based on the 65 wind turbines which Richard Bannister planned to have erected on Walshaw Moor. Turbines 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 21, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 43, 44, 47, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 62, 64 and 65 have already been described.

The developers have canned their original 65 wind turbines, quite possibly in response to the public humiliation of having their so-called ‘plan’ publicy shown to be damaging, irrational and probably unlawful. They have come back with a plan for 42 wind turbines and the amazing Nick MacKinnon and friends have regrouped and set off on a new tack too. The series continues.

To see all the blogs – click here.

 

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2 Replies to “Guest blog – Walshaw Turbine 33  by John Page and Nick MacKinnon”

  1. I was involved in numerous public inquiries (on the side of the angels, I like to think) during my career, and I have to say, Nick and John, I would have been terrified at the prospect of being interrogated by someone with your grasp of your brief. Well done!

  2. Thank you for an illuminating update. Your blogs are a treat. More seriously, I appreciate your digging on our behalf.

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