Letter: Elegance on the wind and power beneath the waves

Sir: In Cornwall, in 1949, I was horrified to see the large, intrusive and, as it seemed to me, ugly Telstar dishes on the summit of Goonhilly Down. Since then these constructions have become a tourist attraction and inspired Dame Barbara Hepworth to create a number of scupltures.

The adjoining wind farm is less conspicuous; the windmills are slender and, to my eyes, beautiful. I regularly visit the Quantock Hills, where the panorama of the coast is everywhere dominated by the huge bulk of Hinkley Point Nuclear Power Station, so I cannot agree that wind turbines are more 'visually obtrusive' ('No such thing as a free source of energy', leading article, 28 February).

No doubt, in time, supporters and opponents of wind farms alike will become accustomed to them and the present hysteria will recede. After all, the British countryside is not an unchanging museum, but a living organism which has developed throughout the centuries through agriculture, enclosure of common land, the Industrial Revolution, the arrival of the motor car and so on.

While indeed there is 'no such thing as a free source of energy', the environmental price of wind farms is less than that of their rivals.

Yours faithfully,

STELLA PATES

Ottery St Mary, Devon

28 Feburary