Painting Pylons

The National Grid own all the pylons that you see striding across the countryside. The pylon structures were designed to withstand ferocious weather conditions and to last for 100 years. But the cables will not last for quite so long.
We have a line of pylons that go past, us a few hundred yards away. They start near The Wash and go to Brent Pelham, on the way to powering eastern London and the surrounding area. This part of the grid carries 400,000 volts.
The pylons have now been up for 50 years and they are having their first major overhaul. This involves inspections and repairs, paining every bit of exposed metal with two coats of paint and then replacing the cables. It is a massive engineering excercise and has taken over year to date. Last summer they painted some pylons and changed the cables on the eastern side of the line. This spring and summer they will replace the cables on the other side.
Every road, farm track and footpath gets a scaffolding safety cage built over it. Many of the farm tracks (which are mainly mud) have been rebuilt with hardcore, so that the contractors vehicles can reach the pylons easily. Hundreds of sign posts have been erected directing the National Grid contrator to the correct pylons. And steepljacks can be seen climbing to the very top of the pylons like monkeys, with paint pots strapped to their belts.
Last summer there was a spate of thefts of equipment from beneath the pylons at night, so we had endless visits by security guards in red vans, many of whom stayed out in their vehicles, in the middle of nowhere, for days at a time. I can't think which would be worse: the soul destroying boredom of the security guard or the endless vertigo of the steeple jack.