The vote came at 8:47 PM on Wednesday, after ninety minutes of debate that was, at times, as much about what kind of place Greymoor ought to be as about whether a road ought to cross it.

By a margin of 3 to 2, the Works Committee approved Dr Bernard Coates’s proposal for a graded road — 2.3 kilometres, 45,000 florins, six weeks’ construction — from the Dunvale road to the site of the Greymoor monitoring station. The equipment convoy from Northcroft Instruments, which arrived at Dunvale junction on Tuesday morning with three wagons of seismometers, gas sampling units, and photometric equipment, may now proceed to the ridge.

Alderman George Firth, the committee chair, cast the deciding vote. He had been undeclared for two weeks.

“I have listened to Mrs Dallow and I have listened to the scientists,” Firth said, reading from a prepared statement. “Both are right. The ridge needs study and it needs care. The conditions I attach to this vote are not concessions. They are the terms on which I believe both things can be true.”

The conditions are strict. Vehicle access is restricted to scientific and agricultural purposes only. No public access beyond the monitoring station. A seasonal weight limit applies from November through March, when the upland tracks are soft. And a restoration bond of 5,000 florins is required — payable by the Royal Institute of Natural Philosophy, to be held by the county, and used to restore the road surface to its present condition if the monitoring station is ever decommissioned.

Isobel Dallow, who farms sheep at Ridgetop Farm and has opposed the road since it was first proposed in March, spoke first. She stood at the committee table for eleven minutes without notes.

“I have farmed this ridge since 1989,” she said. “My father-in-law farmed it before me. The sheep don’t read scientific papers. They know the ground. A road is not a road. It is a promise that more will follow. You build one road and you cannot take it back.”

Mrs Dallow described the changes she has already observed since the glow began attracting attention: walkers on the sheep tracks after dark, a motorcar parked at the Dunvale junction three weekends running, a photographer who left a gate open. She asked the committee to consider what the ridge would look like in five years if access were made easy.

Gareth Penn, who farms at Highfield Farm three miles south of the emission zone and has supported the road from the outset, spoke briefly. “We need to know what’s under the ground. Mrs Dallow is right that people will come. But they’re coming already. Better a road with a gate than a dozen beaten paths through the ewes.”

Dr Coates presented the engineering specifications: a graded surface, not paved, with drainage culverts at three low points. The road would follow the contour of the existing pack track for 1.8 kilometres before diverging to the station site. No trees felled. Two passing places.

The two dissenting votes — Alderman Jessop and Alderman Greening — cited insufficient consultation with the farming community beyond Penn and Dallow. “Two farmers is not the Greymoor uplands,” said Greening.

Outside the committee room, the reaction was immediate. Dr Odette Collis, who has observed the glow for sixty-eight consecutive nights, said simply: “Good. Now we can begin.”

At Dunvale junction, the equipment convoy — three wagons under tarpaulins, watched over by a Northcroft Instruments technician who has been sleeping in the lead wagon since Tuesday — received word by telephone at 9:15 PM. The wagons are expected to reach the station site by Friday.

Professor Aldous Nettleford, who has been visiting the ridge this week with Collis and Dr Maren Ilkley, was not at the committee meeting. He was, according to Collis, on the ridge.