THERE is something magnificent about the way in which Rosalind Craven has made a stand.

The 61-year-old North Yorkshire widow does not want pylons to be built on her fields at Home Farm, Huby.

So, politely but firmly, she has set herself up as a one-woman obstruction to National Grid.

The scale involved in this case has an attractive suggestion of David versus Goliath. Mrs Craven stands small, but determined, in the shadow of a mighty corporation, which wants to place three massive pylons on her land. She doesn't want these gigantic structures and so she has put her foot down.

Last month, Mrs Craven denied National Grid workers access to her farmland. Her defiance against the scheme to build power lines across the Vale of York was backed by more than a dozen supporters, including members of the local Women's Institute.

Mrs Craven refused to move away from the gate at her farm, forcing the company to retreat. National Grid went into a session with its lawyers and has now begun legal action against Mrs Craven. The company will go to the High Court in Leeds this week to apply for an injunction forcing Mrs Craven to allow the company and its contractors on to her land.

This will be the first time during its ten-year wrangle over pylons that National Grid will have been forced to take legal action in pursuit of its controversial scheme to build power lines from Teesside to Shipton-by-Beningbrough.

Many people have been opposed to the pylons, both due to health fears and on aesthetic grounds, and protesters have rallied round the anti-pylons campaign group, Revolt.

Other landowners who wished to refuse access to National Grid eventually backed down in fear of high legal costs. Mrs Craven says that she would have to represent herself in any legal case as she could not afford to employ a lawyer.

Her plucky stand will hearten many people, even if, sadly, she is unlikely to win the argument against National Grid. But all power to her.

Updated: 10:14 Wednesday, October 16, 2002