Countryside is our best asset
Carmarthen Journal | 17 October 2012 | www.thisissouthwales.co.uk
The letter in last week’s Journal from Sara Powell-Davies, which I found most interesting, prompted me to check out the facts she stated and her claim that wind farms can be a tourist attraction.
After a phone call to the Delabole wind farm in Cornwall, I was told that the visitor centre had been closed for about 10 years. I then visited the website of Eco Tech Centre in Swaffham, Norfolk – it has just two turbines, a garden, an orchard, a gift shop, the UK’s largest timber frame building, cinema, a theatre, even an electric vehicle, and many other attractions – not a typical wind farm by any stretch of the imagination.
I am old enough to remember the opening of the first motorway, the M1.
This became a huge attraction, I remember my uncle reaching the amazing speed of 100mph in his Jaguar.
A few years later it was deemed too narrow, too congested and poorly designed – people grumbled.
Like Delabole wind farm, its time as a tourist attraction was short-lived indeed.
I don’t see any tourists viewing the M4 at Port Talbot, on the contrary they are all speeding to the peace and quiet of wonderful West Wales.
People go on holiday for many reasons, but those who come to Carmarthenshire come for the gentle peace and beauty that typifies this magical county.
Instead of Sara Powell-Davies relying on tourist surveys conducted in Scotland, perhaps she should look at the letters from the tourists at Carmarthen Council’s planning department, or our own holiday cottage visitors’ book, in which time after time the peace, tranquillity and beauty is mentioned.
Unlike Scotland, Carmarthenshire has few open spaces, let’s give them the protection they so richly deserve.
Snowy Wilson
Llanllwni
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2012/10/17/countryside-is-our-best-asset/