Underground power distribution? Not in their back yard!

Jim Dunckley from the Safe Haven Network said: "This was a forest at one point in time and it was reclaimed farmland and it's been completely ripped up and devastated.

"We want to highlight the ecological damage that the National Grid are doing to the environment, not just along here, but along the pipeline route."

I'm inclined to agree with him. The footprint of pylons is very light in the long term, whereas digging huge trenches across the landscape could devastate wildlife, drainage and archaeology. From the National Grid technical paper:

For direct buried cables each cable needs to be well-spaced from others for good heat dissipation. To match overhead line thermal performance for a 400 kV double circuit as many as 12 separate cables in four separate trenches may be needed resulting in a cable swathe of up to 40m.