Above: Beauly substation.

What you see above is a view of the gravel quarry and SSEN (Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks) electricity substation near Beauly, Inverness-shire.

Beauly means ‘a beautiful place’ and despite these developments by SSEN, much of it still is. We were walking there again last weekend as part of a visit to the Kilmorack Gallery (showing the excellent exhibition Borrowed Land until 2nd March)

For perspective, here’s an old map of the area contrasted with a current view …

It’s pretty disheartening isn’t it? Imagine if you lived here though, and your favourite walk, through landscape like this (my photos of Beauly taken last weekend and last November) …

Was replaced with this …

The site includes numerous important archeological remains and the developments have obviously caused utter devastation to local wildlife.

SSEN (Scottish and Southern Electric Network) plan to extend their transmission line, create more wind farms and, the site at Beauly is to be extended from 60 acres to 860 acres, which is just huge.

Even worse, this is intended for areas across the Scottish Highlands …

Some might consider this the inevitable price of progress, but it’s not progress, and nor is it needed – which becomes very evident when you look into current and future energy requirements for Scotland and the UK. As usual, quite simply it’s a money-making excercise for global companies, supported and encouraged by our own government.

I’ll include more information about SSEN’s proposals ongoing, but I’m new to this and  you’ll be better informed about these developments and possible ways to help by joining this facebook page…

Communities Before Power Companies

It’s run by people who live in these areas who’ve been resisting such developments for years. If/when you join, invite all your contacts and remember that this affects us all -you might not be able to attend local meetings, but you can sign petitions, write to MP’s and share information.

Lastly, here are two excellent letters/articles published by the Press and Journal (by two admins for Communities Before Power Companies) Elaine Ritter and Denise Davis …