Harry Potter fans force diversion of £430m power line to protect Dobby’s ‘grave’

Nation.Cymru staff

Harry Potter’s legacy is still being keenly felt and nowhere more so than at a certain poignant landmark on a Welsh beach.

Dobby’s Grave has become a much-loved landmark at Freshwater Beach in Pembrokeshire, thanks to the boy wizard’s army of fans.

House elf Dobby died in the film series’s penultimate outing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part One with the scene where he was laid to rest being filmed at the Welsh beach.

It’s become such a protected and cherished spot that fans leave tributes to Dobby, including many painted stones and socks.

Now, it’s been revealed that the huge Harry Potter fanbase has forced the diversion of a multimillion pound energy project called Greenlink.

The £430m project involved laying down of a 190km high voltage cable between Wales and Ireland, with 160km of the cable under the Irish sea.

The initial plan placed Greenlink’s British end at the beach, with the other side of the cable landing in Wexford.

In an interview on The Energy Revolution podcast the director of the project Simon Ludlam, chief executive of advisory firm Etchea Energy, recalled how the plans led to huge protests from Harry Potter fans.

“Once we’d agreed with all the authorities, with all the landowners and the people who own the beach, the local residents, how we’d make landfall, I remember BBC Wales said, ‘Could you come down and just do a quick thing,’” Mr Ludlam said.

The BBC interview resulted in hundreds of phone calls from furious fans, angered that the cable would go “straight through Dobby’s grave”.

Mr Ludlam continued: “And so my colleague Tom, who works in permitting, said, ‘Simon, we’re going to have to respond to these calls.’ And I said, ‘well, Tom, I’m super busy.’ And he goes, ‘no, no, we really have to respond to this’.

“I said, ‘Well, Tom, what are they on about?’”. On being informed the outcry was over the cable going through Dobby’s grave, Ludlam said: “Dobby? Who’s Dobby?”

The energy boss said his response at the time was: “He is a fictitious character in a fictitious book, the whole thing’s fictitious, what are you talking about?”.

However, his colleague insisted that the matter was “very, very serious”.

“So we got back with the planners and discussed exactly how to reroute the cable so we wouldn’t go anymore into Dobby’s grave,” Mr Ludlam explained.

“And a lot of people were very happy about that and, you know, the project’s now going and Dobby’s happy.”

Thankfully, the project launched last year and crucially didn’t interfere with Dobby’s grave.

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