October's Pylon of the Month is a readers' choice. Look at the amazing image and the "three parallel parades of pylons" as the fan who sent the picture in called them in a pleasingly alliterative phrase. Once you've looked for long enough to appreciate the beauty of the image, choose the one you want to be your own personal pylon of the month - I'm avoiding the obvious 132 kV choices in the foreground and going for the 400 kV wide boy on the far right of the picture with two lines on one cross arm.  Why it's constructed like that is something that I'd like to find out more about.

The pylons can be found in the fields between the villages of Plucks Gutter and Minster.  The hamlet of Plucks Gutter is, according to Wikipedia:

..named after a Dutch Drainage Engineer called Ploeg, whose grave is in All Saints Church, West Stourmouth. Ploeg, being the Dutch for a plough, the hamlet takes its origins from the Dutch Protestant tradition of draining marshland by creating a ploughed ditch

In this era of fake news, I'll mention that the Wikipedia page notes that a citation is needed to substantiate this story and as this note was made in September 2016 and no verification has been added, caution is needed if you are ever tempted to hold forth at a party about the origin of place names in Kent.

The fan who sent the picture spotted them whilst walking the Augustine Camino, a new pilgrimage route in Kent from Rochester to Ramsgate.  A quick look at the open infrastructure map for the area shows the parallel lines very clearly with the 400 kV Richborough connection in purple and two 132 kV lines (Canterbury North - Richborough and Richborough - Monkton). 

It also shows Richborough power station which closed in 1996, although the national grid interconnector from the original power station is still in place, and is now the grid link for the offshore Thanet wind farm. The 1000 MW HVDC from Belgium also makes landfall on the site and is known as the Nemo link.  As a Physics teacher, High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) is pretty high up the list of things that I want to understand better and this article from the Powermag website looks like a good starting point.  The icing on the electrical cake is a couple of nearby solar farms - plenty to see if you fancy a pylon field trip to the area.  I certainly do - Kent is one of the areas of the UK that I know least about so I'll add it to my growing list of things to do once normality returns.

September's Pylon of the Month is a bit of a retro photograph that I took myself on a Holga camera which is a "true cult classic of analogue photography" according to this Lomography website. I'm still experimenting with it as you can see from the fact that the image above includes part of the preceding and following frames and I decided to keep that in the (probably vain) hope that it would look a bit more arty and experimental.

Anyway, the picture is of the Cowley substation near Oxford (and Didcot power station) where the 400 kV lines from Didcot get stepped down to 132 kV.  The marvellous 'High Voltage Substations in the United Kingdom' is your go to source for information if you are looking for something similar in your part of the UK.  The Electrical Engineering Portal tells us that High voltage substations

are points in the power system where power can be pooled from generating sources, distributed and transformed, and delivered to the load points. Substations are interconnected with each other so that the power system becomes a meshed network. This increases the reliability of the power supply system by providing alternate paths for flow of power to take care of any contingency so that power delivery to the loads is maintained and the generators do not face any outage.

I particularly like the busbars that can be seen in the background and they give the picture a futuristic vibe. As you approach the site, the contrast to the green fields sloping down to the nearby River Thames is particularly striking.  The Cowley substation has also been in the news recently because it the site for the largest hybrid battery ever deployed. The 50 MW battery will power a 10 km network of electric vehicle charge points. This energy superhub is needed to support the more widespread use of electric vehicles and the charging points they will need in Oxford. It should be completed by 2022.

July's pylon of the month is a splendid model made by a pylon fan who had this to say:

The structure of the pylons is a very interesting design to me and I have recently made an “organic pylon” out of twigs and branches which were gathered whilst out walking my dogs......I am not sure if there will be a demand for this as an artistic statement, but it is something I enjoyed building even though it took longer than I initially thought!

The shadow cast by this month's pylon is also a thing of beauty and the level of attention to detail is quite something.

The vast majority of pylons that feature on the blog are real life pylons that can be visited, but over the years there have been a few models or other artistic offerings. There was a pylon tattoo back in October 2012, followed in December 2013 by a Meccano pylon as well as others that have the 'Art' tag attached to the post.  

Now for a bit more technical detail about the use of wood in real life rather than in model pylons. Wooden poles in the UK are used for lower voltage lines (33 kV and 11 kV) and you see them alongside paths and near residential areas where the voltage has been stepped down from the main transmission network.  For pictures and details of the different types of power lines, this website is a good and fairly straightforward guide.

That's all for this month. More pylon action here next month or if you need more frequent pylon action in your life then go to Twitter and Instagram @pylonofthemonth.

After a pylonless April, I decided that May should be a pylon picture that I had taken myself rather than one of the many sent in regularly by fans of the website.  Near where I live a few miles south of Oxford is part of the National Cycle Route 5.  A mile or so north along the (newly improved) route from Sandford Lock you pass within a few metres of the beauty in the foreground of the photograph acting as a frame for the next two pylons in the line.  You can pause and admire the size and scale of it from up close (and underneath for that matter) before you continue alongside the River Thames to Oxford.  Look more carefully at the picture however and you will see that there are four pylons and this whole area is a pylon rich environment because of the proximity of Didcot Power Station.  If it's a hot day and you decide to cool off in the river as part of your day out, be careful about taking a dip without being aware of a nearby hazard.

Sandford Lasher, or weir, is on the left bank well upstream of Sandford Lock. The pool below the weir has been notorious since the 19th century because of the number of individuals who have drowned there.

Despite having lived there for 16 years, I'd never heard of it before but it's famous enough for the J. Paul Getty Museum to have a photograph from 1872 in their collection.

I'm not as good at identifying the different pylon designs as I should be, but I think these are L6 pylons but I would be delighted to be corrected if I'm wrong.  This page from Flash Bristow's website is a good place to start if you want to know more about the different kinds of pylons. A quick check confirms that it is on a 400 kV line as shown on the open infrastructure map, another excellent source of information about the electricity transmission network in the UK.  At the nearby Cowley sub-station, the 400 kV line gets stepped down to a number of 132 kV lines and another rich source of information about sub-stations in the UK is the Wikipedia page on High Voltage substations in the United Kingdom.  So there you have it for another month; local history, a dash of culture courtesy of a Los Angeles museum and arcane technical information about pylons and electricity transmission networks.  Come back for more next month!

December's pylon of the month is another first for the blog as the observant amongst you will already have spotted.  It is an absence of pylon or a pylon of the imagination, at least in the picture above.  I spotted it on Twitter recently where it was posted by @geospacedman with the following description:

Contrails? No, electricity cables backlit by building works lights over the hill. I think there's a pylon in this shot but invisible.

October slipped by without a pylon and November was in grave danger of going the same way until two things happened.  One was a comment on the blog asking when the next pylon was going to be posted and the other was a visit to Geneva where I saw this beauty.  But it wasn't just Geneva, this pylon is actually inside the cathedral of physics that is the 'Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire' or CERN as it is know all over the world.  As a Physics teacher this is about as good as it gets and so how could I possibly resist.

CERN uses quite a lot of electricity when it is up and running:

At peak consumption, usually from May to mid-December, CERN uses about 200 megawatts of power, which is about a third of the amount of energy used to feed the nearby city of Geneva in Switzerland.

The annual electricity bill is about €60 million but about 90% of this is linked to the operation of the accelerators and at the moment, the Large Hadron Collider, is shut down for maintenance and upgrade work so there whoever has the job of feeding coins into the electricity meter must be having an easy life.

This second long shutdown (LS2) is due to be completed by early summer 2020.  Until about March visiting CERN is definitely worth the effort as you can get underground and look around in a wat that just isn't possible when everything is up and running.  Get there whilst you can!

This month's pylon is from Italy and will be particularly appreciated by pylon fans of a bibulous disposition. It was sent in by a fan of the website and was taken in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy.  In particular,  the vineyards of Barbaresco, and according to wine-searcher:

Barbaresco is one of the great wines of the Piedmont region in northwestern Italy. Historically it was called Nebbiolo di Barbaresco (Nebbiolo being the grape it's made from) and was used by the Austrian General Melas to celebrate his victory over the French in 1799.

Such is the beauty and distinctiveness of this part of the world, that in 2014 it was recognised as a World Heritage Site because '......the Piedmont vineyards provide outstanding living testimony to winegrowing and winemaking traditions that stem from a long history, and that have been continuously improved and adapted up to the present day'.

So pylon fans heading for this part of the world can tick off the rather splendid asymmetric pylons in the vineyard before retiring to a bar to sample the local wine.  In doing so, it would be wise to ensure that the difference between the two local wines Barolo and Barbaresco is properly appreciated.  

The main difference in Barolo and Barbaresco is in the soils. The soil in Barbaresco is richer in nutrients and, because of this, the vines don’t produce as much tannin as found in the wines of Barolo. Both wines smell of roses, perfume and cherry sauce — and they both have a very long finish. The difference is in the taste on the mid-palate; the tannin won’t hit you quite as hard in the Barbaresco.

The quote above is from wine folly and with plenty of wine recommendations to try out, oenophile pylon fans will be in heaven.

July's pylon is another Wiltshire pylon and the red sky and clouds provide a beautiful backdrop to its lovely silhouette.  There is definitely something here for the cloud spotters and the photographers, but you can pick out the Stockbridge dampers and two sets of ceramic insulator discs so there is also something there for hardcore pylon spotters.  It was sent in by a fan of the website and is on the A350 in Chippenham, near the Premier Inn.  Pylon fans seeking an excuse for a road trip could do worse than heading down the M4 to Chippenham, which :

....enjoys a reputation as a flourishing and lively market town, with a compact centre and thriving commercial life, it has been granted Purple Flag Status for its nightlife.

Never heard of the Purple Flag Scheme? No, me neither so let's educate ourselves via the Association of Town & City Management (ATCM) website:

The Purple Flag standard, launched in 2012, is an accreditation process similar to the Green Flag award for parks and the Blue Flag for beaches. It allows members of the public to quickly identify town & city centres that offer an entertaining, diverse, safe and enjoyable night out.  

Once you've ticked the pylon off your to do list and perhaps enjoyed a night out in Chippenham there  are plenty of places to visit because:

The great houses and art treasures of Longleat, Bowood, Corsham Court, Lacock Abbey and Dyrham Park are within easy reach, as is Castle Combe Racing Circuit.

That's all folks - more pylon action next month or if you really can't wait then go to @pylonofthemonth on Twitter.