Countryside
The dramatic landscape of the Upper Calder Valley is some of the most spectacular in the UK. By rights this area should be a National Park. If the wind farm goes ahead, Walshaw Moor will be littered with turbines, which will also tower over neighbouring valleys, including the renowned National Trust estate of Hardcastle Crags and Crimsworth Dean. These photographs show some of the places which will be affected. Huge turbines would intrude on all these views. Our natural heritage will be destroyed and we will lose the wild and beautiful places we love to roam.
Wildlife
Walshaw Moor is the Jewel in the Crown of Calderdale’s wildlife sites. A Site of Special Scientific Interest, it has European status as a Special Protection Area and a Special Area of Conservation. The ground-nesting birds which return to the moor each spring include critically endangered species such as curlews, lapwings and golden plovers, as well as redshanks, skylarks and snipe. These birds will be wiped out if the wind farm goes ahead, along with rare birds of prey such as merlins and short-eared owls. Whole ecosystems will disappear as the landscape is De-Wilded.
The soundscape of Walshaw Moor
Listen to curlews, lapwings and golden plovers recorded by Chris Watson on similar moorland in the Pennines for Voices in the Dark on Radio 3.
Curlew on Walshaw Moor
Curlews in April by Ted Hughes, from Remains of Elmet, 1979. Published here with the support of the Ted Hughes Estate.
All poems from Collected Poems by Ted Hughes are copyright (c) the Estate of Ted Hughes and Faber and Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
View across Hardcastle Crags towards Walshaw Moor from Widdop Road. This entire skyline will be dominated by huge turbines from Shackleton Knoll to Blake Dean and Widdop Moor. The impact of the wind farm on this beautiful landscape will be disastrous. It wouldn’t be allowed in a National Park. It shouldn’t be allowed here.
‘Heather’ by Ted Hughes from Remains of Elmet, 1979. Published here with the support of the Ted Hughes Estate.
All poems from Collected Poems by Ted Hughes are copyright (c) the Estate of Ted Hughes and Faber and Faber Ltd. All rights reserved.
“My sister Emily had a particular love for them [the moors], and there is not a knoll of heather, not a branch of fern, not a bilberry leaf, not a fluttering lark or linnet but reminds me of her. The distant prospects were Anne’s delight, and when I look round, she is in the blue tints, the pales mists, the waves and shadows of the horizon. In the hill-country silence their poetry comes by lines and stanzas into my mind.’”