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thesweetcheat wrote:
Generally speaking I'm with you on this. There are some places where they enhance even (mostly out to sea off places like Rhyl, it must be said).

I said a year or so ago in another thread that it's often about context though. Years ago when I was a kid, I used to go to Nottingham with my Dad on the motorway from Birmingham and I used to be fascinated by the lines of pylons marching across an otherwise flat landscape. I still think they have a certain grandeur now, which probably stems from those "roadtrips". But put them next to Tinkinswood, or the lovely pair of stones at Bwlch y Ddeufaen and they're enormously intrusive. I know comparing pylons with wind turbines isn't strictly "like for like", but I do think that a wind turbine that might blend into the landscape in one place isn't necessarily going to blend in everywhere. This probably means that you therefore have to consider them on a case-by-case basis, which is difficult without local knowledge. I personally wouldn't welcome them in the wide-open spaces of Dartmoor, say - imagine one next to White Moor and I don't see that as being a good move. But in lots of less open countryside they wouldn't offend me in the slightest.

I also think it's right to acknowledge that they represent an attempt to move us forward. None of us would want to do without electricity, so some compromises are going to be needed anyway.

We have a windfarm a few miles from where we live, one of those that covers a whole area of hill with white whirlybirds. I hate them as it totally spoils the landscape and devalues the price of the nearby properties. Thank goodness we don't see it every time we look out of a window! They always catch your eye and detract from everything else.
On saying that though, we have a local farmer who has erected one next to a new barn he had planning permission for, for his own personal use on the farm. It is a black one and yes, it does stand out, but it ceased to catch our eye after just a couple of weeks because it is a one-off and becomes just part of the landscape amongst a myriad of other things, unlike the windfarm that dominates the landscape where it is.

Sanctuary wrote:
We have a windfarm a few miles from where we live, one of those that covers a whole area of hill with white whirlybirds. I hate them as it totally spoils the landscape and devalues the price of the nearby properties. Thank goodness we don't see it every time we look out of a window!
Horses for courses I suppose, but I would have no problem at all seeing those beauties on a hill near me.

How does it 'spoil' the landscape exactly? I'm not saying you are doing this Sanctuary, but sometimes I think people react to change without giving themselves time to work out exactly what it is they don't like.

Sanctuary wrote:
... devalues the price of the nearby properties.
Like I said earlier, my view is that context is important. But I'm not sure that local property prices ought to really be a consideration in whether to put up a turbine or not, in my view. Presumably the owners of the properties are happy to use electricity, as long as it comes from a power station that's a long way away, out of sight and is only devaluing someone else's property prices!