Sir, Over the holiday weekend residents and visitors will have been astounded at the immense size, extensive visibility and incongruity of the two 86.5m (284ft) wind turbines erected above Ludchurch by the ambitious proprietors of Princes Gate Spring Water. So, I am sure, will have been Her Majesty and Prince Philip at their Royal Visit to the bottling firm's HQ last Tuesday. But no-one will have told our respected guests that these huge machines were bulldozed through by the council's planning officers without even giving elected members the benefit of a site visit beforehand. The detailed warnings expressed in objections from the county branch of CPRW (the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales) were never formally mentioned in the long and complex process; the impact report commissioned by the Council from the Dyfed Archaeological Trust was wrongly deemed late and its recommendation to refuse consent was ignored. Local residents later secured and won a Judicial Review because the council had wrongly applied its earlier policy on protecting the historic environment: they appear since to have lost a second review, but judgement has mysteriously still not been 'handed down'. Not a kilowatt-hour will be generated until after a formal test is run, to determine amongst other things whether the revolving blades towering above the well-known Belle Vue equine centre will be tolerated by its sensitive horses. It seems inevitable that these nervous animals - highly-trained by the expert Isabel Scourfield - will be startled out of their minds by six 28m whirling blades 100m above their heads and between 200 - 400m away. It's ironic that their Royal Highnesses - so sympathetic to horses - came from visiting the respected equine hospital at Robeston Wathen to be shown the hill-top turbines which could put the county's famous training enterprise out of business. I'll bet our royal visitors were told nothing of the flip side of sunny Pembrokeshire's rural enterprises last week. Geoffrey Sinclair,

Glebe House, Martletwy.