A Blot on the Landscape
In the frozen north of the Deux-Sèvres lies the picturesque town of Airvault, a Petite Cité de Caractère no less! But on the edge of this town the ground shakes as a behemoth awakens. The ageing cement works, after 103 years, is having an upgrade; a new, all singing, all dancing, environmentally friendly, cement producing machine is being built (the local disused railway lines have been reopened to transport the grey stuff around the world), producing less CO2 emissions and cutting water consumption. Now I'm all for progress, but like a mythological Greek Titan pushing its way out of the earth it rises above the skyline and can be seen for miles around (I can see it at the bottom of our road and Airvault is 9 miles away). People get their knickers in a twist about wind turbines, but their graceful turning, I find, has a certain charm. The structure that is being constructed to house the furnace at Airvault is like the Great Eye of Mordor casting a shadow acro...