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A trip completed about a month ago to visit Whitelee Wind Farm, The UK's largest onshore turbine location so worth a day out. A new destination for Alan as he was curious about it. A second visit for me, decades apart. Anyone who reads this blog already knows I love Renfrewshire and Inverclyde with a passion- as the area of land between Newton Mearns- Stewarton- Dalry- Johnstone and Paisley is completely unique in my mind. A wonderful world of blue reservoirs and small dams, green rolling farmlands and loads of small hills and ridges. A patchwork quilt of complexity... and variety. As seen below.
....and here again, below. One of the many rolling ridges in this area reached by quiet minor roads under slightly different grey light conditions. Edging into Inverclyde but still beautiful undulating landscapes. Happily, very few parking places for visitors. A place to explore via public transport. Train ,bus, bike... or on foot. Good dairy farming country. To built a large wind-farm site here would be complete madness. You would think.
Fortunately, Whitelee is situated in East Renfrewshire... which is a different beast altogether as the lands above Eaglesham are flat, higher and much bleaker in character. A wasteland of open moor.
I'm not a particular fan of wind turbines in general but if you had to install 215 large turbines in one location without spoiling the surroundings too much then this is the perfect spot to achieve that.
In the warmer months they run buses around the wind-farm park and it is popular with mountain bikers, dog-walkers, wind-farm baggers etc with endless miles of fairly flat trails to negotiate but we, Alan and myself, contented ourselves with following just a couple of paths up to the turbines before calling it a day. To be honest once you have seen one of these monsters up close the thrill tends to dissipate somewhat if bagging the other 212 so we headed across the road to go up Ballageich Hill instead as I remembered it had good views over Glasgow.
The Eaglesham moor road gives you an idea of the landscape of East Renfrewshire. We had to walk down here to get to our hill.
As soon as we were on top of it we felt immediately better, looking out over Renfrewshire again. Bennan Loch here, above. Although snow was absent it was bitterly cold with night frosts down to minus 8 to 10 below for over a week.
The mossy ground was frozen solid sporting a thick blanket of ice...
...and any dams up here, at almost 1000 foot of elevation and completely open and exposed, had an almost walk across cover of ice.
The cold clear air did produce pin sharp clarity of vision though for obtaining good views of Glasgow from our hilltop vantage point.
A view of the Hydro, extreme left, Shawlands hi rise, (4 white blocks above cottage) and Glasgow city centre... on the middle right.
Looking across at Ben Lomond with its cap of snow.
A remote farm on the edge of Whitelee.
Neilston Pad from Ballageich summit.
A West Glasgow view. Bottom of photo to top. Silverburn Shopping Centre. Moss Heights hi rise flats.( long white block) Scotstoun hi rise flats, Middle left edge.
After our hill we travelled back through the Barrhead Dams district. This is an area near Newton Mearns where an old dye works used to be. Although I've cycled past here many times in previous decades I never stopped to go in so I never realized how extensive it was until now. A sort of mini industrial hub in the depths of the countryside. Alan knew all about it though.
Fairly slippy minor roads after a week of minus 8 below. Melting at the edges in limited afternoon sunshine.
More sheet ice. An abandoned site for now but given the relentless march of the ice sheet glacier that is Newton Mearns posh housing nearby it might not be long before this site gets tarted up and turned into an owner occupier smart suburban enclave instead.
Which brings us down to the Barrhead Dams, also frozen.
For the last couple of years it has looked like this with the water well down on previous levels. Fishing piers stranded a long way from any fish. The smaller lower dams are the same size they always were but this largest dam, Balgray Reservoir, is a pale shadow of its past glory. I do not know if it's surplus to requirements now but it used to look like this...
Almost large and wide enough to be an inland sea, a great delight in spring and summer, and far more impressive than any wind farm to walk around. This was what it looked like in summer 2016.
Duncarnock. Unchanged for a thousand years. Site of an ancient hill fort and tribe. A good day out. If you skip the wind farm.
We can send you some rain - our levels get higher every year - we have liquid mud running down even our driest hills now :-(
ReplyDeleteI like windfarms - I remember going to visit, years ago in the early 80s, the lone wind turbine at Findhorn - must have been one of the first in the country. I spent ages trying to get to it but never quite got up to it. Very beautiful in my view... and absolutely essential!
I like Whitelee, we’ve had a few good walks round its trails.
ReplyDeleteHi Carol, lack of rain is not a problem as the other dams are always full. It's as if the biggest dam is surplus to requirements now as its been half empty for several years and they have recently buried large pipes linking up other districts, like Ayrshire, so maybe the water goes there now as well.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt. With being a serious hill bagger for decades I've walked through scores of wind-farms on the way to summits. Walking through thick pine forests and then wind farms have been a large chunk of my outdoor life so any novelty wore off long ago. Good for the planet- bad for photography.
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