Bed protest inspired by Pink Floyd album cover placed on Saunton beach

Early morning visitors to Saunton Sands on Sunday might have been surprised to see several neatly made beds set up on the beach in a protest inspired by the iconic Pink Floyd album cover.

Campaign group Save Our Sands had created the installation as a modern twist on the A Momentary Lapse of Reason album cover picture depicting a sea of beds on the beach, shot at Saunton in 1987.

Their demonstration on Sunday was a protest against plans to bring electricity cables at Saunton to serve the White Cross offshore wind farm, which will mean tunnelling them under the beach and then through a variety of highly protected areas to a sub station at Yelland.

They said their protest was not against renewable energy but the choice of the cable route and they fear it will have a huge impact on tourism and the community.

Above: The Save Our Sands team after completing the Pink Floyd-inspired installation of beds on Saunton Sands. Credit: Liz Seymour

Save Our Sands and other campaigners were dismayed when North Devon Council’s planning committee approved the cable plans in May despite more than 1,800 objections and an online petition with 3,800 signatures.

A banner alongside the beds on the beach read: ‘North Devon Council, you said YES to White Cross – was this a MOMENTARY LAPSE OF REASON?’.

The group secured permission to create the installation, which was only in place for an hour until 8.30am before being tidied away to ensure it did not disrupt beachgoers.

SOS raised £895 in less than 24 hours to fund the demonstration and the new bed frames will be donated to the Forces Support charity shop in Green Lanes Shopping Centre.

Helen Cooper, SOS founder, said in a Facebook Live video the beds had been placed more or less where the cable would go.

She added that the banner would now go ‘on tour’. She said: “It will be appearing along the cable route at various points, which we thought would be quite dramatic and our own personal twist on it is to show the effect on the tourist industry, which will be hit very hard by these plans.

“So these beds could represent Airbnb and perhaps the Saunton Village down here on the beach and how badly they might be impacted.”

Above: Save Our Sands founder Helen Cooper at Saunton Sands, with the bed installation in the background. Credit: Liz Seymour

Council planning officers recommended approval of the application, subject to 39 conditions. Their report said the benefits of generating renewable and low carbon energy and contributing to net zero outweighed the ‘largely short term environmental impacts’.

The cables will carry power from a ‘test’ windfarm of up to eight turbines 31 miles offshore, which White Cross says will power up to 135,000 homes.

The cabling work is expected to take two years, with a work hub in Saunton Sands beach car park, closing 40 per cent of parking for what is a popular tourist and surfing beach, plus there are expected to be up to 90 movements of heavy lorries per day through the narrow and busy streets of Braunton.

Ms Cooper told the BBC: "We've been really overwhelmed by the support. It's to highlight the fact that we feel we have been silenced.

“What we're trying to do is highlight the fact that we really need people to value this area a lot more. It's a very precious environment.

“We feel if this can be approved in this area, nowhere is safe, nowhere in the UK, nowhere in the world.”

When the plans were approved, Al Rayner, project director for White Cross, promised his company would ‘inject £153m into the local economy’.