Coastal Care National Treasures of Wales

'The National Trust has more than four million members.

'It's Britain's largest landowner.

'As English as cream teas.

'Or is it?

'Because it all began in Wales,

'where it continues to look after the treasures

'of this beautiful country.

'But I want to find out what the future holds

'for this guardian of our shared past.'

Abermawr in Pembrokeshire.

It's a spectacular piece of Welsh coastline.

It's also National Trust coastline.

They own 157 miles of seaboard in Wales.

That's one sixth of the total.

They look after sea walls and also the wildlife.

They conserve the land,

but they have to encourage visitors to come onto it.

They look after archaeological sites,

but they have to look out for rising sea levels.

And all this is contradictory.

So, is National Trust Wales heading into rough waters?

'In order to answer this question, we have to begin at the beginning.

'I'm in Barmouth, on the north Wales coast,

'where the bequest that started the whole organisation was made in 1895.

'And it wasn't a stately home.

'It was essentially a piece of cliff.'

Four-and-a-half acres were given by Fanny Talbot.

And she wanted, she said, to give it to a society

that would never vulgarise it

or prevent wild nature having its way.

A sentiment that rather sums up

the purpose of the National Trust even today.

'Richard Neale is a National Trust ranger

'and has spent over 20 years working on this coastline.'

-Two things are rather wonderful.

-Yes.

-The first is that they started with 4.5 acres.

-Yes, yes.

-And the second is that it was in Wales.

-Yes, exactly.

We think of the National Trust as quintessentially English,

but it's not quintessentially English at all.

No. No, absolutely.

The roots of the Trust are here.

We've always appreciated the landscape.

Our poetry, our folklore, our music

has always paid tribute to the beauty of the landscape.

And the visitors that have come in have also been inspired.

'After the death of her husband,

'Fanny Talbot devoted herself to philanthropic work.

'She greatly admired the efforts of her friends Octavia Hill,

'Robert Hunter and Canon Rawnsley,

'who'd set up an association dedicated to

'places of historic interest and natural beauty.'

There were places that were so important

to our wellbeing as a nation

that they deserved to be sort of set aside

and looked after and cared for forever.

'Fanny believed this organisation had been born in the nick of time.

'And her gift of 4.5 acres of rugged hillside

'expressed her faith in their ideals.'

Tell me about Fanny Talbot, then.

Well, she moved here in the 1860s and she was a friend

of some of the pioneers of the conservation movement.

And in her time here,

she saw Barmouth being completely transformed.

The railway arrived here in 1870s, 1880s.

So during her time here, what was the little quarryman's village

turned into a noisy Victorian and then Edwardian resort.

She could see really, here, the pressures,

even here on Wild West coast,

the pressures that our land and our coast especially was under.

'The organisation was founded as a response

'to the unprecedented change brought about by the Industrial Revolution.

'Fanny's gift ignited it.

'And in 1907, an Act of Parliament bestowed unique powers

'which enabled the National Trust to own property in perpetuity

'for the benefit of the nation.'

To the Victorians who founded the National Trust,

there was a moral dimension to what they were doing

in as much as they wanted people to come to the countryside

because they thought it was better for them.

They thought that the great cities

represented a sort of Satanic development

and that if people could come out into the countryside

and see and enjoy nature and this world,

they would become better people as a result.

Now, since then, we've added a few other important moral dimensions

to the idea of the countryside and places like this.

We want to preserve the ecology.

We also have an idea, a very important, strong belief

that we need to preserve the history and the past.

And that adds to the complexity of looking after these places.

'Justin Albert is the Director of the Trust in Wales.

'It's his job to steer them through this rather complicated business.'

I think people presume we open and close houses.

That our job is to open a house, let people in and close it

and serve scones and cream teas at the end of the day.

And that's fine. We give that service to our members

and I'm overjoyed, I'll do it every day.

But we do so much more.

And getting members to understand and learn the conservation,

the heritage assets we look after, the storytelling we do,

that is one of my goals.

'And there are a lot of stories to tell.

'After Fanny's original fairly modest contribution,

'more places were acquired.

'And over the next 70 years, the Trust steadily accumulated

'not just land around the edges of Wales, but farms, too,

'and ancient monuments and cottages.

'It was all bit piecemeal. A bit random.

'There didn't seem to be much of a plan.

'However, in the 1960s,

'concern about developments along the coastline

'caused them to take a closer look.'

50 years ago, the process

of acquiring beautiful coastline like this

took on a new purposefulness

when the Trust commissioned a report from Dr John Whittow.

'Whittow's team collected evidence which shocked everybody.

'They discovered that every year,

'over six miles of beautiful coastline around Britain

'was being eaten up by the very thing Fanny Talbot had dreaded.

'Developments that prevented wild nature from having its way.'

The coast of Britain, it was realised quite quickly,

was being overdeveloped with no planning constraints at all.

And people could build by and take apart the coast.

And a very clever bunch of people

within the National Trust in those days

said, "OK, let's start a fund.

"A campaign to save the British coast."

And over the last 50 years, we've generated a lot of money

from donations from individuals.

And we have acquired coastline

around the British Isles. A lot of it in Wales.

'They were trying to preserve more places like this, Mwnt,

'which they acquired in 1963.

'158 acres of coastal landscape covered in grassland and heath

'with a sheltered cove, which is home to

'the largest bottle-nosed dolphin population in Europe.'

No, I think I've gone wrong here.

This is a farm.

'Perhaps a little too sheltered.

'Visiting in the early spring, I have trouble finding it.'

I'm utterly lost.

Every road in this area is signposted, "Mwnt."

'Over 100,000 visitors a year make their way here.

'All coming and going by car along this single-track road.'

Sometimes, in the summer,

this becomes a rural gridlock as a result.

But you have to applaud that, in a way.

If this became a four-lane highway to the sea,

it would rather defeat the purpose of the National Trust owning it.

'The need here is to maintain this piece of coastline's

'unique and inaccessible beauty.

'But that's sometimes at odds

'with another one of the Trust's values,

'as I discovered for myself on the way there.'

One of the principles of the National Trust

is for everyone forever.

Access was what it was founded on.

The whole idea of any National Trust property

is that people should be able to come here and enjoy it.

I honestly didn't set this up.

This is all just rubbish that I happened to find.

But it's really not possible

to have unlimited access for human beings

without there being...a...cost.

When Rhodri Morgan, the former head of the Welsh government,

said that this was his favourite place in Wales,

visitor numbers increased dramatically.

And now we're here, of course, with the television.

Apres nous, le deluge.

Especially if the weather improves.

'When the deluge is over, you can't swing a cat here.

'But out of season, you'd better bring a dog.

'They can certainly shift a load of ice cream here on a sunny weekend.

'How much does that commercialise this patch of wild nature?'

Isn't there an element of a pact with the devil here?

The more you provide, the more people are going to come

and effectively, the more depredation they're going to make.

I'd love to have that problem in more places,

of too many people trying to get outdoors.

The problem we have is not enough people go outdoors.

We... People park their cars,

walk 200 yards, get back in their car and leave.

I want the problems of too many people,

I want the problems of right to roam,

but I fear unless we do something more dramatic,

we're still not going to have enough people

experiencing and loving the outdoors.

So if it gets to the point at Mwnt or somewhere else

that we have too many people there, great!

We have to change the messaging.

Say, "If you love the outdoors here, go down the road.

"If you love the outdoors, try the Brecon Beacons,

"try the Cambrian Mountains, try Snowdonia!"

Once we've got you hooked on that, boy, we have you for life.

Yeah, we've got a few bits, but not loads and loads, I'll be honest.

'Gwen Potter is the ranger here.

'One of 57 National Trust Wales employees

'working along this coastline all year round.

'She looks after a team of volunteers,

'as well as the toilets, the paths and the wildlife.

'And she's on the front line when it comes to visitor feedback.'

"Lovely beach, but needs bins

"to dispose of dog business and rubbish."

But we don't put bins down here because we tend to find that

we get loads more rubbish than just bits and bobs.

We get household rubbish, as well, coming down here.

'This is one of the ironies.

'If there are bins in a place like Mwnt,

'it attracts more rubbish, not less.

'And don't they, as Fanny Talbot might say,

'vulgarise it, anyway?

'According to Gwen, 99% of visitors respect this place,

'but unfortunately, the remaining 1% leave their mark.'

We've had some at some beaches

where, um...they will come and they might drive onto the beach

and then they'll leave loads and loads of litter.

That's the worse you can get, really,

is someone who comes and lets their dog off the lead maybe,

maybe there's a seal on the beach

and they let their dog go and attack the seal.

We've had dogs chasing sheep off the cliff and that kind of thing.

So you do get that, but it's a very small minority of people.

But it does cause problems, yeah.

'But should we get hung up about visitor numbers here?

'Because people have always come to this place.'

Long before the first picnic hamper arrived,

the pilgrims were here at Mwnt.

'And before them, there were farmers and settlers,

'travellers and herdsmen.'

There is nowhere in Great Britain which is purely natural.

It's all formed. It all has its look

as a result of a relationship between humankind and nature.

So we might look along the coast and think this is all quite natural.

Doesn't it look after itself?

If this was left, most of it would be woodland

and then the tops probably would just be completely covered in gorse.

And that's all you'd have.

So you do need to manage, particularly in Britain,

you need to manage your wild places.

'So what Gwen and I are looking at here is largely created by mankind.

'The worn cliffs, the dark scrub and the cropped fields

'have evolved over thousands of years of pasturing.'

The spirit of each place is very different.

Some places are very much, um...sort of associated with people.

Somewhere like here, for example.

And you do need to take into account the history of a place.

But then, somewhere else, you may not have that human interaction

that you've had in other places.

So then you can consider more, um...the wildlife, perhaps.

'Here in Mwnt, the appearance of a landscape

'shaped by both nature and people

'is maintained through the use of specific livestock.

'Different animals do different jobs on the land.'

The types of species you get here, you want sheep,

whereas other places, you may not want sheep,

you may want a completely different thing,

like a cow, or you might want a pony.

They just basically eat everything.

And what it means is you get this kind of very short turf,

which some of our species love, such as the choughs.

And the choughs? What are choughs?

Choughs are a lovely, lovely crow that used to be all over the UK.

What's the difference if you have, say, horses?

Well, ponies, they will actually eat in a completely different way.

So they'll kind of go around and only eat particular things.

They will eat things like gorse, get rid of some of the bracken.

They won't necessarily eat it, but they'll stir it up.

And they also poo in a different way to other stock, as well.

So they'll actually have latrine sites

that they go back to repeatedly.

And you get your rank grasses there,

then the rest of the place isn't overly fertilised, like a cow would do.

So what we're looking at, a cow has a completely different regime entirely

and they eat different things and poo in different places.

Of course, nature, or the nature

we understand as being part of the British Isles,

interacts with these other animals,

their droppings and the grasses, too,

and the things that grow there,

the other animals that relate to the insects.

So effectively, what you're managing

is a huge sort of universe of life here.

Yeah. That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah.

'Human beings, though, relate

'to this eco-universe in a different way.

'Their droppings are not appreciated in the landscape.

'They need a building where they can be private.'

If I were being a little bit sour about the National Trust,

and some people can be sour about the National Trust

and everything they do,

to get some form of complaint, you could say

that here's a toilet block, a necessary toilet block

very discretely done and then absolutely plastered

with signs and instructions.

There's this for people who need

gender distinctions of diminished stature,

but up here, we have it again

for people who may be of extended stature.

'And when you've stopped counting toilet signs,

'you're bombarded by all the organisations

'that have put money into the project.'

What about signs?

We come down there and find the EU has put some money into a bit of it

and the European Union insists on having a plaque up

that says the European Union has done something to help this.

Along comes the council, they've put a little bit of money into it,

they want a plaque, as well, saying, "We've put some money into this!"

And so does the Heritage Lottery. Can you do anything about that?

I-I-I-I-I don't mind the plaques as long as I have the money.

I don't have enough money to do everything I want.

And they can have their plaques, they can put them on the side

and they can have dancing girls outside to hold the plaques.

If I get the million pounds, I'll take them

because the liabilities of what we have here are enormous.

So, yes, I'll put up with the little plaques.

'The countryside is open to everyone.

'Unlike the houses and castles, the Trust don't charge an entrance fee,

'just for parking.'

Does it actually wash its face?

Does the car park...? As they say in...

-Does it cover its...?

-Yeah, does it cover its costs?

Um...I'm trying to think.

No, it doesn't. No, no, it doesn't.

So the money that's made from the car park,

it doesn't actually pay for the amount of money that's required

just to look after this place?

Not even close. But it does help.

It's £3.00.

In a big house, we can charge people admission.

And we can use that money to do the roof.

We can use that money to paint a wall.

In the countryside, there's no revenue stream.

Maybe a bit of parking.

Maybe we can sell a hot dog or two,

but if it's going to cost £500,000 to maintain footpaths,

how do we finance it?

We don't get money from the government.

The only revenue source we really have is through membership,

visitors and people leaving us money when they pass away.

'Over recent years, there's been

'a new and developing menace for the Trust.

'A recent report predicted that 167km

'of Trust-owned coastline in Wales will be affected by erosion

'and raised sea levels over the next century.'

Only a short while ago, the path used to be here.

That's gone.

They've moved the path in a few yards.

But what if it's not just paths that are threatened,

but houses or archaeological sites?

'This is an urgent problem.

'It needs confronting.

'But the proposed solution is controversial.'

If you think of this one factor,

you cannot build a sea wall around the coast of Wales, OK?

So you've got to take a bit of a judgment, haven't you?

Where does the sea wall stop?

And there's a lot factors that come into that.

Mainly, it will be, you know, how many people are living in that area?

If there was houses all along the top, it might be more of an issue.

Which bits do we protect at all costs?

Because they're just so important for the economy of the nation.

But which bits do we then work with nature

and have a more natural, a more beautiful

and a more wildlife-friendly coast as a result?

'The National Trust has two options.

'To hold the line, or adapt to change.'

Unless you build a concrete wall around the entire Welsh coast,

and English and Scottish coast,

you'll never stop the rise of the tides.

The only way you can succeed is by taking those barriers down,

letting the sea over the land and letting it retreat.

And when you have high tides, as you do once or twice a year,

and once a decade, you have a very, very high tide

and they're going to get higher and higher,

it allows the water to escape and come back.

It's healthier for the environment, healthier for the farm.

'So the preference, then, is to adapt. To embrace change.

'In other words, to plan tomorrow's coastline today.'

'They call this managed realignment.

'We went with Justin to see how they propose to do this

'at one of their sites at Llanmadoc on Gower, in west Wales.'

'The radical solution here involves

'knocking down an historical feature.'

If you told somebody, "We're taking down a medieval wall

"and we're flooding with salt water that beautiful environment over there

"and turning it into that," people could take the wrong end of the stick.

That's an artificial habitat, anyway.

This wall has created that habitat.

It would have once been salt marsh, anyway.

And also, the sea has started to take this wall apart on its own

without our help whatsoever. This has already started to fall apart.

So rather than try and fight nature, we just thought we'll go with it.

Essentially, bright green is a bad colour for conservation.

That just means we've got really rich grasses

that are good for farm animals, but really bad for wildlife.

So although it looks beautiful,

it's actually not amazing for wildlife at the moment.

'Bright green is the wrong colour

'because it's the result of years of artificial fertiliser,

'as opposed to the natural type deposited by the animals themselves.

'And it's led to one dominant grass.

'The range of habitats that would sustain insects

'and birdlife has gone.

'Not only that, the Trust believes that flooding this land

'will counterbalance sea defences some way off along the coast.'

It actually helps land further down there that's actually

become part of a coastal sort of squeeze,

where we've got concrete walls.

And so this actually offsets some of the damage that's been done

in towns and villages down there.

'Does the Trust's archaeology consultant Claudine Gerrard

'think this is a good idea?'

I was quite shocked. I thought, "Are we really going to do this?"

I was very concerned. But that's the thing that we have to do

really, here, working for the National Trust,

is balance nature and the historic environment.

'Here, unlike in Mwnt,

'the Trust are working with nature, rather than with history.

'Far from being coy about flooding a medieval landmark,

'they are heralding it as an example of good practice.'

We're showing the Welsh Government and others, we're doing this in England,

what you should be doing to protect farmland.

To stop massive floods that you've had, you know, in 2014,

big floods in the Somerset Levels.

That's caused by forcing... Being King Canute-like

with your thinking about the sea, the ocean.

'Over the centuries, this coast has continually transformed itself

'as a result of both nature and man.'

And the question comes along, we've been here for 8,000 years

so, which bits do you represent?

What do you keep? How do you decide?

'Sometimes, the decision is taken out of our hands.

'In Rhossili Bay on Gower,

'a medieval village is falling into the sea.

'Recent severe winter weather is hastening that process.

'Although not visible to the untrained eye,

'Claudine feels they must record the remains before it's too late.'

What we would like to do is establish the extent of that village

so we can actually get to grips with what we are looking after.

Because we thought we knew,

but actually, looking back at some records,

it's quite apparent we don't really know what is there.

There's been no investigation, we've just gone,

"Oh, that's a medieval village, leave it alone."

But we can't do that any more because actually, it is eroding.

So, what do you need from me, from the National Trust

to enable that to happen?

I need your buy-in, actually, into the idea

and I need you to make sure that funds

from various pots of money that we do have

that are targeted at these kinds of things, coastal erosion money,

comes to us in Wales here at Rhossili, rather than anywhere else.

Money, I'll try and find.

But seriously, why wouldn't we want to do that?

'But without the revenue generated

'by the teas and wees at the country houses,

'how on earth can they pay for all they need to do?'

If you have membership and say,

-"Well, let's restrict it to members?"

-Never.

If you have a turnstile, let's make people pay?

Never.

Never. We.. It is... You can't do that.

I mean, it is that sort of, it is this conundrum, you know,

a benign sort of Christian Socialist upbringing of the National Trust,

which is everybody open access, then you have to pay for it.

-OK.

-And it is a dichotomy. There's a real problem there.

'Was he tempted, then, by the turnstiles?

'Is the Trust too constrained by its guiding principles,

'forever, for everyone?

'Let's face it, managing the countryside costs money.

'Whatever you may think about the Trust's decisions,

'whether they prioritise conservation over human concerns,

'choose preserving history over access for all,

'given that their responsibilities will last forever,

'you can cannot but marvel at the scale of the undertaking.

'And ponder a little bit.'

I wonder if Fanny Talbot, when she gave

this few hundred yards of coast here,

ever imagined it would turn into 157 miles?

And I wonder if she ever imagined

there would be so much work involved

in the archaeology and ecology and just economy

of running such a place?

'But the battle is surely worth the fight.'

Despite the complexities and the problems,

if you seek a monument

to the ideals of National Trust Wales, look around you.