Wind turbines

Our stroll on Sunday 29 July was a 17 mile-er from Norham to Wooler. We are now in England, and unfortunately moving away from the coast. As we've passed through lots of rural areas over the last week, it has been a reminder that not everywhere is connected into the internet and the burdens of 21st century communications.

At lunchtime today I was accosted by a local complaining about wind farm applications in the area. He was scared about the damage wind farms in the Northumbrian countryside will have on the landscape and tourism.

There is obviously a tension between local and global environmental damage. This is why the first thing we need to do as a society is limit the amount of energy we use as much as possible. The more energy we try to extract from the Earth, the more likely we are to damage it, whether through climate change, or through covering lots of land with wind turbines - if that can beseen as damage.

As a non-Northumbrian I couldn't argue for wind farms in Northumbria. I won't be living near them. However, I did tell the local man that I spent several years in my childhood living next to Didcot coal fired power station, and would rather it had been a wind farm.

Distance covered so far: 194 miles
Reading so far: Once through 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'