Wild Land News no 70, Autumn 2007

Braes O' Doune Article

Returning to Scotland from Devon, David Jarman is appalled at the industrialisation of a familiar landscape

There is a moment as the train north corkscrews the down grade from Plean Junction to Bannockburn when, if you are sitting on the counterintuitive east side, the cutting opens out, the Ochils come into view, and for a few hundred yards the line twists sufficiently for the alert passenger to see north-west through the Stirling gap to the first mountains of the Highlands. The train is travelling at its fastest here and is soon down on the carse.

Travelling south, on the upgrade, you have slightly longer, but have to be facing backwards, or crane yourself to the disconcert of fellow travellers. Either way, the train always gives you a discreet reminder, as the track cants quite perceptibly from one way to the other; in railway terminology these are 'reverse curves'.

This may be your first sight of the Highlands ever, or for an unconscionably long time, or of the day, if you are commuting south, or since the morning if you are returning home; always assuming of course that they are visible under an Atlantic front, or above a carse fog, or in the late dawn or early dusk of the short days. If you have made this journey hundreds of times, you may be so immersed in a paper, or papers, or (rare treat) good converse, that you miss the nudge of the reverse tilt, or respond to it tardily. The wee kicking you give yourself restores your alertness, for a few journeys. For it is important to know they are still there.

The mountains are Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin, the nearest Munros to the Central Belt along with Ben Lomond. They are a pretty mis-shapen pair, surviving teeth in an almost empty lower jaw, but they are unmistakably Highland and quite different in ruggedness and ancient-ness from anything further south in Britain or indeed Europe; for they are the ramparts of the Caledonides. They are set back a few miles from the Highland Boundary, one of the greatest and most abrupt geological transitions of these isles, so that the land rises up to them in stages; their neighbour Ben Ledi is not quite a Munro but more prominent because it is right on the Boundary.

Of course most travellers north come up the motorways, and as they cross the brow and come down to the inner carse on the west side of Stirling this great prospect unfolds in panavision. And the thousands upon thousands who ascend to the battlements of Stirling Castle or climb the Wallace Monument can savour it to the full, with the aid of their handbooks, or tour guides, or interpretation boards. For this is one of the very best broad landscape views it is possible to obtain in Scotland from an accessible vantage point. While the view of the castle is truly iconic and sells the postcards and calendars, it is the view from the castle - harder to capture in pixels - which is the more enduring impression.

It is possible to stay almost twenty years in a place such as Stirling and still have territory within close compass to explore. I long knew some good bike rides above Doune, up through field and forest to where the rough grazing begins. They were ideal for summer evenings, with a saunter out onto the moor as far as the enduring wetness allowed in trainers. Above the moor the slope increases to the tedious flat skyline of Slymaback, a ridge so obviously peat-hagged and so difficult of approach that when time was called on my lease of Stirling, I had still never ascended to it, despite intentions of proving its horrors, for it is only 1600' high, and in a fine dry spell finer options beckon. This skyline is fully part of the view from the castle, but its very dullness serves to lead the eye further in to the bolder swellings just before the Boundary and the culminating Munros beyond.

So when a few years back I heard of a 'wind farm' proposal for the Braes o' Doune it seemed as "least bad" a place as any. My idea of a wind farm in similar uplands at that juvenile stage of their evolution was Black Law in Lanarkshire, quite visible from the M74, but not at all offensive on moorland slopes; likewise that on bleak Soutra Hill beside the A68 into the Borders. I never even troubled myself to go and look at the plans, to visualise their impact, or to discuss it with friends or neighbours. I was never aware of any campaign against it, other than perhaps a few Nimbys more bothered by construction traffic up their lanes. Apparently the National Trust did object, but the Council backed it without a qualm; this at a time when going green was all the rage, and wind generators a symbol of progress and foresight.

By contrast, at around the same time I reacted with fury to the proposal to erect a wind installation on the anonymous sub-Corbett hills above Lochearnhead and Glen Ogle. The turbines would have been right in the foreground of the view north from Ben Vorlich towards Ben Nevis, centre-stage in the great arc of the Grampian Highlands from Stobinian round by Alder to Lawers. Happily the planners soon ditched that one - not because of the mountain scene, but because it was just within the upcoming National Park. Poor Slymaback is just four miles outside.

On one of my last sorties from Stirling, I finally went up Slymaback, in trainers, with dry feet, by dint of some stimulating route selection. Amongst the hags on top there sat a man, the odds against which - on a winter weekday - I would have wagered a years' pay. Ever curious I went over. He was being paid to sit there - counting birds in a before-and-after survey required by planning condition on the wind farm. It started construction soon after my last evening constitutional along the golf course rim to take leave of its irreplaceable prospect. I still had no inkling of what was about to befall it.

A year later, the Braes of Doune wind project is inaugurated by Alastair Darling. Soon there are cries of horror from aghast friends, and reports in the local press expressing outrage - the councillors and planners say they had no idea it would be so intrusive. I make a fleeting revisit to Stirling, there being no NHS dentists left in Devon. Thick mist.

My next return is to give evidence at the Beauly-Denny Inquiry, resisting the mega pylon line which would unlock a proliferation of mega wind installations. Already, we have one above Inverness, smack in the middle of the stupendous view from Cairn Gorm, spanning from Ben Nevis right round to the Caithness hills. And the view from our ultimate Munro, Ben Hope, now terminates eastwards in the mushrooming wind installations of Caithness. And the prospects right across the Highlands from eight Munro groups will soon have the Glenmoriston scheme in the frame. And there are plans lurking for the Arkaig hills, commanding the approaches to the Rough Bounds.

I take the train north from Glasgow to the Inquiry at Perth on one of those mild February days of pale sun, slight haze, and anticyclonic calm when you are uncertain what you might see in that fleeting moment on the down-grade. The Ochils are soft, with cloud wisps around Ben Cleuch. And there they are, Ben Vorlich and Stuc a' Chroin, as of old, barely a trace of the snows of January, today placid, benign, distant, with so much subtle intervening texture that with a frame around the glimpse it would pass for a Constable or a Raeburn.

Smack dab in the line of sight is the wind factory, a score or more of shiny steel columns with brilliant white rotors, some revolving lazily, others static. Even 12 miles distant, the scale of these objects can reasonably be described as giant. They render the mountains beyond puny. Some rotors rise above the skyline of Slymaback. The complex is much, much more intrusive than Grangemouth, which we have just passed a mere five miles away. It humbles the castle on its modest rock. It completely supersedes the Wallace Monument as the dominant landmark for miles around.

How should we react to Braes of Doune ? Leaving aside the climate change and peak oil arguments, how should we view this first big highly visible scheme to impinge on the Highlands, purely in landscape terms ? Will it become an accepted part of the scene, maybe a tourist attraction in its own right ? There is no doubt the two Forth Bridges are immensely popular, and are justly celebrated as the pride of Scotland's engineering tradition, and should be preserved as monuments. Supposing Braes o' Doune had been conceived as a gigantic artwork, like the Angel of the North, or Scotland's underrated answer to it, The Horn by the M8 ? Can we see it not as a vandalised Constable, but as a surrealist masterstroke, a cheeky moustache enhancing a Mona Lisa ?

At the official launch, the local MP admits that a lot of people are upset by this cuckoo in their nest, but bravely asserts that once you get up there it really is very impressive. Indeed the pictures of rotors against the sky are photogenic, even sublime; being amongst them on a windy day must be quite awesome - and the views out from it are of course unspoiled.

Maybe in years to come revised guidebooks will be urging people to visit the parapets of Stirling Castle for the incredible views of the windfarm, with the mountains serving as the painted backcloth to the real action. Indeed many visitors unaware of how it was before may well say gee that's quite something and snap away uncritically. We are so good at making a virtue out of necessity, of finding the saving grace, of mentally turning a sow's ear into a silk purse, of seeing the shiny revolving silver lining below the clouds. Even oil-shale bings have become historic monuments. We are so good at becoming inured to changes for the worse all over the Highlands - blanket forestry, hydro reservoirs and power lines, road improvements and sign clutter, fish farms in every loch and bay, bulldozed tracks up the glens and onto the high tops. All good ideas when they first began.

But if Braes of Doune becomes acceptable, so will scores more wind schemes, and the novelty value won't quite be the same. We don't need to attract more visitors to Stirling Castle, we don't need to make its view more dynamic, we didn't need to make that sacrifice of what was, until now, one of the very best almost unspoiled panoramas in the country.

I have two sons, brought up in Stirling, one a hill-lover, t'other more a city boy. I chose not to mention this manifestation. One travels north by coach, sees it from the M9, says he just could not believe anyone would have let this happen. The other drives up from London to Inverness to ensure the grandson is born Scottish. He simply says now he will never be able to show the wee lad what his daily view to and from school used to look like.