The Middelgrunden wind farm off the coast of Denmark gives tour groups the rare opportunity to actually climb a turbine.
Photographer: Carsten Snejbjerg/BloombergTake Me Out to the Wind Turbines
Boat rides to offshore wind farms offer visitors an “otherworldly” opportunity to get up close.
The sheer size and scale of wind turbines, which can stand over 800 feet tall and rotate at up to 200 miles per hour, is often used against them. Speaking in Britain’s House of Commons last year, Neil Parish, then an MP and chair of an influential environmental committee, expressed a typical view: “Why do people come to many of our great constituencies? Because they are beautiful,” he said. “Tourist[s] love to come to them, but I promise that they do not come looking for solar or wind farms.”
Except there is growing evidence that, at least sometimes, they do. A number of companies now offer wind farm tours to curious tourists who are keen to understand how the turbines work and what they’re like up close. In Scotland, adventurous visitors can mountain bike and hike around an onshore wind farm, and boat tours in the UK and US offer the chance to sail right underneath a turbine’s blades. In Denmark, small groups can even climb an offshore turbine themselves. While there’s no data to indicate the size of this nascent slice of the hospitality sector, there is ample research to suggest that travelers are not only unfazed by wind farms, but find them objects of fascination.