I KNOW how excited you will all be getting about Sunday's New Year's Day dip in Earnse bay and other spots. That magical feeling of numbness as you strip off and your hungover toes touch the icy sand. Being winded by the shock of the water. Then afterwards wondering if you will ever be warm again. A brush with the Irish Sea is truly the highlight of the year.

But just this once I hope you will agree to forego the experience because New Year's Day 2017 is our moment to stand up against the damage set to be inflicted on the wonderful landscape of the Duddon valley. It has been an honour to team up with the campaign group Power without Pylons to organise a special January 1 walk in protest at National Grid's plan to pollute this most special part of the Lake District with giant pylons carrying the cables from the new power station being built further up the Cumbrian coast at Moorside.

What has angered local people most is the way the government has so far been prepared to countenance wrecking the Duddon landscape while bending over backwards to appease the plummy accents of the Friends of the Lake District National Park. Nothing has been too expensive to reduce the visual impact on certain parts of the Lake District. The route has been changed, a massive tunnel proposed under Morecambe Bay, and now extensive undergrounding is on the table further up the coast.

But measures which are described as modest, sensible adjustments for the national park are apparently an impossible extravagance when suggested for the Duddon. That is just not on. Our part of the Lakes may not yet have been lucky enough to get the level of fuss afforded by national park status, but the valley of Wordsworth is every bit as beautiful, special and worthy of protection as anywhere else in the Lakes.

The majority in our community are rightly robustly in favour of the energy, security and high-tech jobs that will come with the new civil nuclear plant at Moorside. But the decision to site nuclear power in one of the most beautiful parts of England always rested on an implicit deal to protect the natural beauty that surrounded it. In the following decades that deal was made explicit and became an essential factor of the diverse synergies that make up the Cumbrian economy. Going ahead with giant pylons in the Duddon, rather than any of a number of more palatable alternatives, will seriously damage the deal.

But the argument is not going to make itself. Which is why I hope that as many people as possible will join me in two things. Firstly, make your voice heard by responding to the consultation by email, online or by post before the deadline on January 6. All the details are on the Power Without Pylons website. Secondly, join me on the New Year’s Day walk, there will be two groups starting promptly at 9.30am, one from the Duddon Road car park at Askam and one from the square in Broughton, meeting at around 11am in Kirkby for a photo, with transport back to your car provided.

There may even be a verse or two recited from Mr Wordsworth himself. You won't get that if you jump in the sea instead.