The equipment needed to build a scientific monitoring station on the Greymoor ridge weighs, in aggregate, approximately fourteen tonnes. The path currently leading to the site is a sheep track that has supported nothing heavier than Gareth Penn’s border collie since the abandoned meteorological outpost was closed in the 1950s.

This presents a logistical problem.

Dr Bernard Coates, County Roads Surveyor, visited the site on Monday and submitted a formal proposal to the Council Works Committee on Wednesday: a 2.3-kilometre graded road from the junction with the Dunvale road to the monitoring station site, with a packed-stone surface suitable for heavy vehicles.

The estimated cost is 45,000 florins. The estimated construction time is six weeks. And the estimated degree of local enthusiasm is, to put it gently, mixed.

Penn Says Yes

Gareth Penn, whose Highfield Farm sits three miles south of the central emission zone, was the first local voice in favour.

“You can’t carry a seismometer up that track on a mule,” he said, leaning against his gate with the pragmatism of a man who has farmed the Greymoor uplands for forty years. “If they’re going to study what’s happening on the ridge, they need a road. My grandfather mined copper up there in the twenties. They had a road then. It washed away in the forties.”

Mr Penn added that he would be willing to allow the road to cross a corner of his grazing land, provided the boundary fencing was replaced at the county’s expense.

Dallow Says No

Not all of the Greymoor farmers share Mr Penn’s view. Isobel Dallow, whose Ridgetop Farm adjoins the proposed route to the north, attended the Works Committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon and spoke against the proposal during the public comment period.

“A road brings traffic,” Mrs Dallow said, a woman of sixty-one who has farmed sheep on the ridge since 1989. “Once you build a road, you cannot unbuild it. First it’s scientists. Then it’s sightseers. The glow has already brought three carloads of people with cameras up here on a Saturday night. A road makes that permanent.”

Mrs Dallow’s concern is shared by at least two other farming families in the area, though neither attended the meeting.

Dr Coates acknowledged the concern. “The road would be a single-track graded surface, not a metalled highway,” he said. “There is no proposal for public access beyond the station site. But I understand Mrs Dallow’s point. Roads have consequences.”

The Committee’s Decision

The Works Committee deferred a decision to its next meeting on 9 April, requesting a more detailed environmental assessment and a consultation with the three affected landowners. Councilwoman Pryce, who sits on the committee, noted that the monitoring station contract — awarded to Northcroft Instruments of Edgeminster at 195,000 florins — assumes construction access.

“The station is approved and funded,” she said. “The road is how it gets there. We should not delay the science because we are arguing about the path.”

Northcroft Instruments has confirmed that fabrication of the station’s equipment is underway and that delivery to site is expected in mid-April. Without the road, the equipment would need to be transported by hand or pack animal — a process Dr Coates estimated would take three to four times as long.

Mr Penn, when informed of the committee’s deferral, was philosophical.

“The sheep don’t care about the road,” he said. “They’ll walk on it or they won’t. The earth has opinions. The sheep do not.”