Thousands of Shropshire and Mid Wales residents and campaigners face an uphill battle to stop massive pylons being built across miles of green open countryside.

Officials at National Grid have today announced their preferred site for a new substation in Cefn Coch in Powys and a route of pylons and underground cables linking up with an existing power line at Lower Frankton in north west Shropshire.

The aim is to increase the number of windfarms in Mid Wales transporting electricity to the National Grid as energy consumption steadily rises in the coming years.

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Several other routes were considered including from Cefn Coch to Wigmarsh or from an alternative site for the substation at Abermule to Lower Frankton, Wigmarsh, or Walford Heath.

Earlier in the process places such as Ironbridge, near Telford, Herefordshire and Swansea were also considered as options for the connection to the electricity network before being dismissed.

But despite National Grid claiming that local views have contributed heavily in their final route decision, campaigners who have fought so hard against the scheme since it first emerged in March last year are unlikely to give up without a fight.

They have staged frequent protests over the proposed development including a demo last June when an e-petition containing more than 3,200 names was handed in to the Welsh Assembly.

It said the proposal equated to ‘environmental vandalism’ and that whatever the projects final cost it would be a shocking waste of public money.

Shropshire Council’s cabinet also registered objections to the idea, with council leader Keith Barrow arguing that more windfarms and pylons were not the way forward and that the consultation had effectively pitted one community against the other.

Campaigners say pylons will blight the areas of countryside they hold so dear as well as leaving homeowners more open to health risks.

In a survey carried out by Welshpool Town Council more than 80 per cent said they were ‘concerned’ about the development.

And the Shropshire branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) has said it is concerned about the impact the proposals could have on the county’s economy, which is boosted by millions of pounds from tourism each year.

But National Grid says it is 10 times as expensive to lay underground cables, which are also more difficult and costly to repair. They said the planned scheme will make use of both pylons and underground cabling but it remains to be seen which will be used more.

The gas and electricity company has been swamped with comments from more than 6,500 people which has caused continuous delays to the project.

The decision on the preferred route and substation site was initially expected to be announced last September and then in May this year.

National Grid originally hoped to start construction on the plans by 2014, which now seems unlikely due to the long drawn-out process which people say has left a cloud of uncertainty hanging over their communities.

Members of Montgomeryshire Against Pylons (MAP), which is fighting National Grid’s plans as well as the overall industrialisation of Mid Wales, are due to meet at the Cefn Cefn Inn, in Cefn Coch, at 5pm tonight to lobby against the decision made.

A placard-waving protest is also expected to be held tonight after the campaign group called for people’s renewed support on its Facebook page which has almost 950 supporters.

A statement yesterday said: “We need as many people as possible at 5pm at whichever village is identified by National Grid. Please bring posters, banners, etc. and wear your T-shirts (if you have one).”

But National Grid said they have listened to consultation responses closely which told them that parts of the corridor in the Vyrnwy Valley could be particularly sensitive to an overhead line. Their work also suggested that there are areas where engineering and other challenges would make laying underground cables difficult.

The company also said they had listened to the feedback from specialist bodies on the effects of a connection in the Powys uplands, which meant they had made some changes to the route corridor to provide more options for routing the connection.

Jeremy Lee, National Grid’s lead project manager, defended the scheme and said it was necessary to meet the UK’s growing energy needs.