skying: Burgar Hill, Orkney

Tip

Burgar Hill

Alistair Peebles, 2008

Photograph by Gauld Richard Gauld, from Orkney Case Studies

When most folk think of Orcadian wind turbines an image of Burgar Hill will come to mind, as the towers have been installed there since 1983, beginning as a test station. The installation now consists of 5 Nordex turbines.

The towers are on the plateau and downslope, above the township of Evie that’s sprinkled along the coast road. These windmills seem to face away from the lip of the natural bowl of Mainland Orkney, as if they belonged as much to the neighbouring isle of Rousay. View-wise they do.

[photo]

Burgar Hill turbines, from Costa Head

Alec Finlay, 2011

turn-
ing

float-
ing

furl-
ing

rippl-
ing

Taking the Dounby road east, through The Lyde – the low road that leads between hills to Finstown – the blade tips turn in and out of view, creating an odd, rather comical effect, as if the Tin-Man was calling halloo.

[Good weather photo of blade tips over hill]

Alistair Peebles, 201*

The day Laura and I made our trip to Burgar Hill was grey, wet and wild. June in the guise of November.

The towers lowered out of cloud; blades tore in and out of view, mist accentuating the speed of their revolution.

floating over
the flattened shell
of the sky

My Lowland vernacular felt inadequate to these local weather conditions, so I sought guidance from Alistair, who helpfully provided me with Marwick’s Notes on the Orkney Dialect

Wedder

greyan’s
a gentle breeze

tirl, gurl or hushle
feel the breeze lift

bat or skwither
duck a squall

skreever or sweevle
see how this wind will whirl

(after Marwick’s Notes on the Orkney Dialect)

[photo]

Alec Finlay, 2011

The old Visitor Centre's now locked an empty.

Next-door, the electricity sub-station is a reminder of Orkney’s energy dispensation; a kind of devolution, as the islands are part of the National Grid while at the same time managing their own electricity allocation.

Laura explains that Orcadia has a ‘smart grid’, another example of their role as a pioneering microsystem. This type of flexible system of electrical dispensation is what the UK will need to adapt to, on a grand scale, in order to manage the fluctuations in energy that are intrinsic to a renewables based policy.

And, Laura says, being so close to the means of production, folk here think of the electricity they use as their own. It can be the same with rural communities, if the turbine is on their land and exists as a resource they share with the greater grid.

Photo

Alec Finlay, 2011

Top

[photo]

Mesostic, Burgar Hill

Alec Finlay, 2011

Bring

yoUr

shaRp

winGs

Around

pieRcing

tHrough

thIs

Low

cLoud

[Photo]

blade swoop

Alec Finlay, 2011

[photo]

aXis

Alec Finlay, 2011

Up top it’s wild, too blustery for photographing poem-labels with cold fingers.

The effect of different towers fading in and out of the hull of cloud, and the gigantic blades rushing down from the axis of the nascelle is startling, sublime.

SIGURD

Alec Finlay, 2011

The name on one turbine seems aptly Scandi, SIGURD. Another bears a memorial dedication.

[Photo]

windmill memorial

photograph by Laura Watts, 20**

[photo]

poem label, Burgar Hill

Alec Finlay, 2011

hidden

towers

tip

blades

over hill-

tops

The turbines were positioned to avoid the flight paths of birds to and from Lowries Water, an RSPB reserve, ensuring the red-throated divers – rain-geese as their known locally – have remained safe.