Lives in a Landscape - Series 5 - Tilting at Windmills

Windfarms, Earth-destroying asteroids and raining fish - apocalyptic visions run surprisingly high in the sleepy beauty of the Welsh borders, as Alan Dein discovers when he visits the village of Knighton on the route of Offa's Dyke. Situated with one foot in Wales and the other in England, Knighton is known for its picture-postcard tranquillity. Yet today all is far from calm, as a new windfarm, with its giant slowly rotating turbines, is planned for the hill on the edge of town. Some people look on this as their part in saving the Earth from the threat of climate change, others as the destruction of the ancient landscape. Meanwhile, on the hill itself stands an observatory, the Spaceguard Centre, whose director sees its role as drawing attention to the dangers lurking in space, and the likelihood of the world's destruction by asteroid strike. So did a strange shower of fish over the town hint at apocalypse? Alan Dein visits the town, reads the omens and tries to understand why the sky over Knighton is filled with portents.