They call it Megawatt Valley, some people. The twelve-mile section of land through which flows the River Aire, the Aire and Calder Navigation Canal, the M62 (Junctions 35 to 33, westwards) and the A645 which carries traffic to and from the mighty coal-fired power stations of Ferrybridge, Eggborough and Drax.
They call it Megawatt Valley, some people, realising cleverly that the greatest, most significant flows through this area might be those carried through the power lines from these three massive monuments to our modern slavery to electricity. Clearly Drax (two clusters of six towers), Eggborough (two of four) and Ferrybridge (two of four) dominate the scene for many miles around, their size and graceful shapes an awe-inspiring spectacle. And having spent the day walking beneath their towers (Eggborough’s close-up), noticing the activity generated by them, realising that this valley is also a coalfield, I suspect that they dominate the commercial and industrial scene here too.
The Eggborough circuit: leaving the canal at Whitley Bridge station, on a three-passenger-train-a-day line heavily dominated by goods traffic, I stop to recall the railway accident very near here at Great Heck in 2001 when Gary Hart, driver of a Land Rover towing a trailer, dropped off the M62, down an embankment and got himself stuck on the line, causing an Inter-City 125 and a freight train to collide, and ten people to lose their lives.
The main street in Eggborough begins in dusty industry (Bowman’s Flour Mill) and then gives way to the gentle sights of retired men, morning papers in their hands, waiting anxiously for buses, older people and mothers with young children circulating between the surgery and the pharmacy, the Eggborough Church (denomination unstated) covered with a large banner announcing this weekend’s Harvest Festival (I bet they do that in style here), and people using telegraph poles to post notices about forthcoming village events and – in one case – to list a set of furniture and other household goods for sale – all enquiries welcome. At its junction with the A645 (terrible to cross) the road gives way to industry again – car sales, garages, mini-market, butcher and hairdresser.
The power station fills the skyline, increasingly so as the road comes to meet it. Along the perimeter road, every hundred yards or so, are identical white noticeboards each with the same eight pieces of A4 paper posted inside. Close inspection reveals that these are legal documents, detailing the High Court injunction which stops anyone accessing the power station land without the consent of Eggborough Power Limited – and in particular Zoe Armstrong, Alison Templeton and Anna Harrison, evidently the main protagonists in the Camp for Climate Action which has protested here.
As I walk the perimeter (sunwise, at midday) I realise that I’m having a little difficulty because there are no pedestrian paths here (though the verges are wide enough to permit them). I realise that as poke my digital camera through fences and stand at gateways clicking, the CCTV cameras of Eggborough Power Limited are training themselves on me. It dawns on me that if the drivers of wagons and service vehicles passing me on this road give me any thought at all, then they may judge that this t-shirted, dusty-shoed rucksack-wearer is probably one of those Climate Campers.
I’m not; though I share their concerns I think they’re a bit shouty for me, and I wonder if they’re addressing the right people (Eggborough Power Limited are after all just supplying most citizens’ needs to have at least ten electrical items plugged in and humming with power, twenty-four hours a day).
But if it weren’t too dangerous I’d walk symbolically in the middle of the road, on this issue, as I also think that while the protesters are too shouty, Eggborough Power Limited and those who run Drax, Ferrybridge, etc, are too silent in reply… if this circuit of mighty Eggborough means anything maybe it’s to tread into the ground a desire for all sides of the climate / power debate to walk together and have a mature, open conversation about it. I’d like to learn how to be part of that.
The Eggborough circuit ends with a lovely half-hour at Whitley Lock by the bridge beneath Junction 34. In the triangle of land with the gentle canal at its edge and the violent M62 / A19 junction at its point, a farmer runs a tractor across his field. Slowly, bumpily, dustily, repetitively. Ploughing.