Copyright 2004 Telegraph Group Limited
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)

January 23, 2004, Friday

SECTION: News; End column: Pg. 31

LENGTH: 311 words

HEADLINE: Plague

BYLINE: By Peter Simple

BODY:
AT THE head of the Eden valley in Westmorland, where its tributary streams
flow between the Pennines and the foothills of the Lake District, there is a
stretch of country which for many reasons is especially dear to me. It is an
upland region, part uncultivated moorland, but with a few small villages and
scattered sheep farms in its recesses. There are stone circles, tumuli and,
here and there, outcrops of limestone flags and a few storm-warped thorn
trees.

This is no beauty spot or statutory "area of outstanding natural beauty"
categorised for the multitude like the Lake District, half ruined as that
has been by their overpowering admiration. It has hardly been exploited, as
yet, by the infamous tourist industry. It does not lend itself to such
treatment. It is simply an honest, unremarkable stretch of northern
countryside.

Curlew and plover still breed there and fell ponies roam. Certain plants,
which have disappeared from places where they once were common, still grow
there; one is the humble, beautiful bird's eye primrose. Every year in June,
I have tried to make a point of visiting a certain place among the hills
where this most appealing of all English wildflowers can be found.

Two years ago a blight fell on this region, horrible in itself, made even
more horrible by government mismanagement, deceit and deliberate
malevolence, the blight of foot and mouth, from which the Eden valley is
just now beginning to recover. But now another blight, no less horrible, is
beginning to afflict it: the blight of the wind farm.

In the very place where the bird's eye primrose grows, the wind industry is
planning to set up some of its monstrous steel towers. If it is not
prevented (and many people, of course, are trying to prevent it), it will
dominate this quiet region, incorporate it in industrial England and
obliterate it for ever.

LOAD-DATE: January 23, 2004