Respected travel writer, Bill Bryson, has backed the Friends of the Lake District’s pylon campaign.

The American author, who has documented his explorations of Britain for his books, is a patron of the group and has joined the Say No To Pylons in The Lake District campaign ahead of the final public consultation this week.

The proposed route, aimed to connect the Moorside nuclear development to the national grid, will be discussed on Thursday.

Mr Bryson said: “This is one of the finest landscapes on the planet. It should be cherished and nurtured, not used as a convenient shortcut for business interests."

The event will take place at Heysham Library between 2pm and 8pm on October 29, and will look at how the National Grid plans to connect the proposed Moorside power station to the existing network, including a tunnel underneath Morecambe Bay.

National Grid’s current chosen route corridor runs from Harker substation near Carlisle, largely following the path of existing low voltage power lines around the Cumbrian coast to Moorside.

It then heads from Moorside to the Furness peninsula where it goes under Morecambe Bay to emerge at Middleton substation near Heysham.

The plans have been fraught with controversy since the route was first demonstrated, with taller pylons being proposed for construction along a 15 mile stretch within the Lake District.

Robert Powell, National Grid’s project manager said: “We’ve had some very interesting discussions with people about the progress we’ve made on the project since we announced our chosen route for the new connections in June.

“We thought that it would be a useful exercise to share information on the work we’ve done so far, including our work with landowners, Electricity North West and other key groups to start to develop the initial design for the new connection.

“We will be back to continue our dialogue with communities. Over the coming months, we expect to further refine the design of the connection ahead of carrying out formal consultation next year.”

Before work begins in 2019, National Grid has to submit an application for consent to build the new connection to the Planning Inspectorate in 2017 where a decision will then be made by the secretary of state for the Department of Energy and Climate Change.

National Grid is required to provide NuGen, the developer of the proposed Moorside nuclear power station, with the first phase of the connection into the network by 2024.