On the road between Tranent and Eyemouth nestles the tiny Borders village of Cranshaws. Comprising little more than a row of cottages and a decorous 18th-century kirk, it commands spectacular views of the Monynut valley and the Lammermuir hills.

This is the northern periphery of the rolling and majestic countryside that inspired the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott.

It is also the place Robert Goodchild and his wife Kate chose to call home. Eighteen years ago, they decamped from the bustle and grime of the city and every morning was a glorious surprise.

“There is nothing quite like waking up in one of the most spectacularly beautiful parts of the world,” says Robert, a 59-year-old farmer. “We felt truly blessed.”

But their peace was about to be shattered, brutally and irrevocably. It began with an approach from a stranger, warning them that noise level tests were to be conducted in the area.

The stranger, it transpired, was from a power company and the tests were in preparation for the siting of a wind farm, comprising 20 turbines, each 330ft high with blades longer than the wing of a jumbo jet, just yards from their home. Three years later, the Goodchilds’ idyll has been ruined. “What was once a quiet area with nothing but rolling hillsides has been transformed,” says Robert. “We now have an apocalyptic scrapheap on the hill in front of our home. There is no way of describing how grotesque and visually intrusive it is.”

Residents in 20 communities across Scotland where wind farms have been built have similar stories.

There are already more than 300 turbines in operation, capable of generating enough energy to power more than 3m homes.

A further 3,000 are either proposed, being considered or under construction on 400 wind farms around the country.

In the dash for green energy, Scotland has been identified by the government as Britain’s wind farm test-bed in a strategy that promises to alter the country’s physical landscape more fundamentally than anything since the Highland Clearances three centuries ago.

On the face of it, it would be all too easy to portray the Goodchilds and the other protesters now springing up all over the country as small-minded and self-centred. Instead, by a strange reversal of opinion, they are winning increasing support from scientists, experts in renewable energy and even Green campaigners.

As the costs and impact of wind power become better understood, profound and bitter divisions are emerging.

Last Friday at a conference in Edinburgh, Sir Martin Holdgate, an expert in renewable energy who once supported wind farms, fiercely criticised plans for their expansion.

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