Where's Willy?

As much as there seems to be blizzards covering much of the country today we seem to have escaped it again and have had another cyan-skied cracker of a day.

Driving between Stirling and Falkirk is pretty distracting as it is with the spectacular views all along the route, but when the winter sun is blazing, the Ochils are covered in snow and the River Forth is full of icebergs the eyes are prone to wander from the road.

As the news story came on the radio that the go-ahead had been given for an extra 137 miles of power line and pylons to connect Beauly near Inverness to Denny near Stirling I just happened to be passing this sight. As you can see already the poor 'Willy' Wallace Monument on the Abbey Craig is already surrounded by evidence of our energy supply needs. As well as the pylons, you can see the Braes O' Doune wind farm that operates on the hills above Dunblane.

The new pylons passing here soon will be double the size of this one so it's going to make it even more difficult for us photographers to get a pylon and powerline free capture of the area (but we'll get plenty of practice using Photoshop's cloning tool I suppose).

I can understand the need to connect our renewable energy sources to the rest of the country, I'm just not comfortable seeing it being done using the same technology we've been using since 1928 when there are apparently other options.

Still, it's happening now and I'm sure once they're in place we'll all get used to them and ignore their presence as we drag more and more of their resources into our homes.

As for the answer to the question "Where's Willy?", if you look at the Large Version of this picture, he's the chap holding his sword aloft at the bottom left of the Wallace Monument (he's not wearing a red and white stripy hat and you will have to look very closely, but he is there)