HAVING once waded through the 1974 Penguin Classics edition of Don Quixote (940 pages, phew!) I found it almost impossible when writing about the Swindon Windfarm Saga to resist conjuring images of Cervantes’ plucky hero vigorously thrusting himself at windmills.

I have bashed out countless stories on this particular subject over the years; our wind-cluster controversy was a tale with legs that ran and ran for well over a decade. Quite unusually, it also pitted green campaigner against green campaigner.

Swindon Friends of the Earth (FOE) and the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) were normally the greenest of allies, sitting side-by-side at local planning inquiries, combining their knowledge and passion to thwart devious developers with unreasonable schemes to build on our green and pleasant land.

But when it came to the contentious issue of windfarms, they were miles apart.

Swindon FOE was wholly in favour of harnessing the elements to create “clean green energy” to combat the pervasive evils of climate change… even at the expense of a string of lofty, skeletal structures sullying the countryside.

The CPRE was aghast at such a scenario. The countryside – or what was left of it – was their remit, their raison d’être. It had to be preserved at all costs… especially against such an unnatural, alien intrusion as that modern-day monstrosity, the wind turbine.

Anyone travelling along the A420 between Swindon and Oxford, in the vicinity of Shrivenham, will know the outcome of this fiercely contested episode that began in 1994 and eventually drew to a close with the first swish of a giant, lazy blade in 2008.

Today they stand with an eerie, almost other-worldly presence like five colossal sentinels calmly going about their business… pretty blades all in a row.

Seven miles away in Old Town, if you happen to be looking out of the right window in the right direction, the view of the UK’s first community owned windfarm, with its 15 mighty blades rotating serenely in the distance, is spectacular.

Those living closer, perhaps, do not have the same sentiment or perspective.

But why does Westmill Windmill Farm – one of the first on-shore wind clusters ever built in the south of England – come to mind?

Because Swindon council has just revealed 30 potential sites for farms that will generate another form of alternative energy – solar power. And some – like the move to build one of the biggest solar farms in the country at Wroughton Airfield – will invariably spark controversy.

It is doubtful, however, that these solar schemes will provoke anything like the outrage or intensity – which ultimately concluded with one of the most nail-biting council votes of recent decades – than the plan hatched by Adam Twine in the early Nineties.

A staunch environmentalist – or “self-confessed greenie” – Adam Twine felt that the answer to one of the planet’s most pressing problems was, quite literally, blowing in the wind.

The son of George Twine, who farmed in the Coleshill, Shrivenham and Faringdon areas, Adam transformed RAF land acquired from the Ministry of Defence during the Seventies into an organic farm.

But his passion for the environment, aligned to growing fears over the consequences of global warming as a result of the burning of fossil fuels, led him to draw-up plans for the Swindon area’s first ever windmill farm.

That’s right, he would bring propellers back to the former RAF Watchfield. There were some mumbles of local discontent but in 1995 he was given permission to erect five 160ft turbines to generate enough electricity for 500 homes.

Ever been to Trafalgar Square? Well, these towering columns would only be a tad smaller than the peak of Horatio Nelson’s tricorn hat, so beloved of pigeons. But this wasn’t quite enough. What about more powerful turbines to gen erate more electricity! The technology was growing all the time. In for a penny….

In 1999 a new scheme eventually emerged. When describing his proposal, almost certainly with a grin, Adam Twine remarked: “Yes… they are going to be big.”

The proposed towers, each topped with the generator, were around the same size as the originals. However, the three robust blades attached to each turbine would be much larger… and now measure over 100ft while rising to 266ft at full height.

That’s just 6ft lower than Swindon’s loftiest structure, the David Murray John building.

They would generate 12,000 megawatts of green electricity – enough to power 2,500 typical homes over 25 years. But an ill wind was blowing in Mr Twine’s direction.

Whereas the windmills Don Quixote attacked were imaginary enemies, those Adam now planned were real life monsters in the eyes of some residents from a cluster of nearby villages, including people living less than half-a-mile away. “Storm brewing over turbines” piped the Adver in 2002. Not ‘arf. The tried and trusted phrase “blot on the landscape” became a byword during a debate which raged for five years.

Nearby resident David North told one of several heated meetings: “We are talking about something five times the size of the Angel of the North – with a much wider wingspan.”

A specially formed group, Vale Environmental Concerns (VECS), argued that the scheme was “inappropriate to the locality and out of scale with its surroundings.”

Basically, the turbines in their breezy rural surroundings just a few miles from the imperious White Horse at Uffington, were too “in yer face”.

The National Trust claimed the imposing mechanical figures would ruin the setting of the conservation village of Coleshill.

There were even claims that the arm-waving giants would “spook the horses” at nearby stables.

Stung by a storm of objections, in 2002 Adam Twine leafleted 2,000 nearby homes to gauge opinion from ordinary folk not involved in the anti-windfarm campaign.

Of the 400 responses he said 73 per cent approved of his proposed windmills.

“There’s a proportion of people who don’t like the idea of wind turbines in the countryside,” he said. “But there are also those who like looking at them.”

He also wheeled out a Very Big Gun. Greenpeace wrote to councillors saying well-planned “clean power” schemes such as this were “imperative” to avert the global catastrophe of climate change caused by burning fossil fuels at power stations.

Imagine the scene, then, when it all came down to a decision in the chamber of the Vale of White Horse District Council on the evening of Wednesday, October 27, 2004.

The marathon debate boomed on for five hours before the votes were finally counted, one-by-one.

It was the civic equivalent of a penalty shoot-out… and Adam Twine may well have been forgiven for punching the air when he snatched it, 9-8.

  • WHEN the public was given the chance to buy shares in the UK’s first 100 per cent community owned windfarm, Adam Twine and his colleagues found themselves under siege.

    The public – including local people who were given priority – wanted “in”.

    Some 2,374 members of the Westmill Windfarm generated enough cash to get the £7.6 million project and up and running.

    The blades started turning in earnest in March 2008, just weeks after they were erected.

    The electricity generated is conveyed by underground cable to a sub-station, where it is metered and fed into the local grid.

    Crop farming, meanwhile, continues right up to the base of the towers.

    A second co-operative was launched at Windmill three years ago – a £16 million project believed to be the world’s largest community owned solar farm.

    Those five soaring turbines now gaze down upon 21,000 solar panels.

  • A MOURNFUL gathering took place on Uffington’s iconic white horse hill carving on a blustery Sunday morning in January 2008.

    The aim? To register disgust at “the desecration of a beautiful area of countryside”.

    Protesters couldn’t stop the creation of Westmill Windfarm – but they could at least give it the thumbs down after losing a long and keenly fought battle against The Rise of the Turbines.

    Organiser Joanne Lambert of Shrivenham said: “I am devastated at the effect these turbines will have on our landscape.

    “I organised this protest because I felt that to weep in private was not enough.”