The Beauly to Denny Power Line

Last week and today me and Dad went on a walk to a wood where there is going to be new huge power lines. The power lines are massive and will take power from renewable energy at the north of Scotland to the rest of Scotland. The route of the power lines means they go over a huge moor where I do a lot of exploring and bone collecting, past my village, past the castle near the village, over a big valley, through one of my favourite woods called Titus Well on the other side, over a moor and over a bit of another wood that I like called Dougal's Cairn.

This is the big valley they cross north of my village. On the left is the castle estate, and on the right though you can't see it is the wood we explored last week and today.

The first I found out about it was last April when Dad and I met a man who was checking for lizards and other animals. He checked whether lizards lived there by putting down pieces of roof felt and checking to see if lizards went underneath to keep warm. Then a few months after that we met a man who was seeing which birds lived in the woods. The power company have to do this to make sure they don't damage any animals' homes when they build the line.

When they started work in the forests they put up signs saying no-one was allowed in the woods anymore, but Dad and I still went in anyway because we are total badasses.

They had signs up about all the machinery that they were going to bring in as well.

Other signs were put up where there was wildlife that needed protected.

The first thing they did was make huge new roads for the machinery to travel on. Here the track that goes straight on was old forestry track, but they built a new track down the hill to the left, and another one all the way to he top of the hill on the right.

On the moor they built a road to join up with it. They dug right down into the peat with a heavy digger,

This is the road which is on the west edge of Dougal's Cairn wood. The power line is going to come from left to right over the top of the wood.

This is what they did to the woods in Titus Well once they had built the roads. They cut down a big area of trees where the power line goes through the forest.

This is what the woods looked like last summer. I knew they were going to cut down along this stream bed because they had put bit of pink tape in the trees to show the edge of the clearing.

This is what it looked like today. In the picture before I was sitting on the right edge of this picture, and it was taken from the other direction. The power line is going to come down the other side of the valley, across the road and up here.

Last week Dad and I followed the track to the top where all the cut down logs were piled up. There were hundreds of them.

The machine that piled them up and carried them down the hill was still there. 

It is incredible how many logs there were.

By counting the rings, you could work out how old the trees were. They were about 15 or 20 years old.

Some of the workmen had dropped litter in the woods and I don't really like that.

I was worried the workmen would scare away the red and roe deer, but last week Dad and I explored the lower part of the wood, which has lots of grassy areas where the red deer like to go. We didn't see any but we saw lots of fresh poo. There wasn't much poo on the higher ground where we were today, but we did find some red deer footprints. We also saw lots of red-legged partridges, a few pheasants, a fox, a red kite and a buzzard.

This is what the view was like when we got to the top of the wood. You could see for miles and miles all the way around. The view is going to be very different once the pylons are up. They are going to be 50 metres high, which is massive.

The power lines are very controversial and could be very expensive. I don't like the pylons going up here.This is such a beautiful part of the countryside, and once the pylons are up it won't look as good and they pylons will be there almost forever.

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