Episode 1 Anglesey: Island Life

Ynys Mon, the island of Anglesey.

For tourists, this is a holiday hotspot

but for 70,000 people, this place is home.

Don't wear a watch, it's Anglesey time.

With a mystical past and a breathtaking coastline,

these islanders all share one thing -

a special place...

Happiest place on Earth.

..and a sense of tradition.

250 years of history.

Who wouldn't be trying to be part of that?

We follow the lives of these islanders

as they revisit the past...

Do you remember Bertie the barnacle goose?

Oh, yes! I'd forgotten about him.

..and face up to the future...

We'll have to carry on. We have to carry on,

my father would expect me to carry on.

..to discover why they're proud...

That's the big word, though.

It's like "Anglesey", like, you know.

..to call Wales's largest island home.

This is an ancient landscape.

Relics of Anglesey's bygone past are dotted all over the island.

Anglesey was the very last stronghold of the Druids

in the whole of Britain.

This was their last bastion.

Let's go!

And they're still here.

-Hello! Are you all right?

-Good, yeah.

Jolly good.

Kristoffer Hughes works as a technician in a mortuary in Bangor.

But aside from the day job, he's also head

of the Anglesey Druid Order.

Today, four days before Christmas at the prehistoric burial site

of Bryn Celli Ddu, he's celebrating an ancient Druid festival.

We're celebrating the Midwinter Solstice today.

Hiya! Happy Solstice!

Normally I would be in something that looks slightly more elegant

but because the wind is roaring at 45mph and it's imminently

going to pour down with rain,

I'm wearing a waterproof cloak and a cream robe.

The Midwinter Solstice was one of the ancient Druids' main celebrations.

Today, Kris is following in their footsteps.

But perhaps in more soggy conditions.

You weren't joking when you said there was water!

Shocking!

'My job is MC, if you like, or master of ceremonies,

'in the true sense of the word, to lead the ceremony.

'But then, I'm not the only participant.'

There is a television crew directly opposite to me.

Fear not, they're here to film me!

Feel the ground beneath your feet.

The dampness of the soil

and take one deep breath with the land beneath your feet.

The Winter Solstice is one of the eight big festivals in the

Druid calendar, and these Anglesey Druids are celebrating,

as their island forefathers did,

the strengthening of the sun

with the passing of the year's shortest day.

Now tilt your chin skyward,

and take one deep, great breath, with the skies above your head.

This is the time of hope and light, love, glad tidings to the world.

'All of the things that you may associate

'with secular Christmas are imbued into this ceremony.'

So people are joyful that the winter will come to an end,

the sun will become stronger, and spring will come.

Over 100 people have come to this year's ceremony.

May it bring you light.

'It never ceases to amaze me that so many people want to come here,

'for the love of a place.'

It's not just for the love of what we do.

It's also for the love of this place, of this island.

There's a magic here, a tangible magic here,

and a history that they can...they can see.

Happy Solstice!

CHEERING

Anglesey was so important.

It was such a threat to the Empire of Rome that Suetonius Paulinus

was sent here by Julius Caesar to take care of the Druids.

We know that Tacitus recorded what happened on the banks

of the Menai Straits when the Druids were slaughtered.

So the Romans may think that they have won, but we're still here.

And those still here get to live, work and play

in 270 square miles of stunning scenery.

The Romans may have had to cross its dangerous tides but now,

since the first of the Menai Bridges was built in 1826,

Anglesey, the Island of Mon, is connected to the mainland.

-RADIO:

-MonFM...

RADIO PRESENTER SPEAKS IN WELSH

'MonFM. Your voice, your island.

'Coming up to ten minutes past five here on MonFM.

'Just looking at the cameras. The Antelope looks quite clear,

'but traffic is heavy there crossing Menai Bridge.'

Though work often takes him onto the mainland,

Mike Williams lives on Anglesey,

and knows its highways and byways better than most.

He's been running his furniture business for all his working life.

When I cross the bridge I feel...

I feel safe coming onto the island.

I'm home, relaxed, don't wear a watch - it's Anglesey time.

With a population of just under 70,000,

traditionally people on Anglesey have found work in the family trade.

Mike's no different.

His furniture business was founded by his father nearly 60 years ago.

People do tend to say I'm a bit of a chip off the old block.

So I don't know if it's a good or bad thing, really.

But there we are, I can't get away from it.

So whatever I do, it's in my genes.

But with his late father no longer here,

Mike's now the sole man in charge,

and the only one left to battle a disaster

that nearly destroyed the business.

He had a saying in Welsh...

Don't worry... "Paid a poeni. Dy dad sydd wrth y llyw."

Which means, "Don't worry, your dad's at the helm."

I wish he was at the helm when I had the fire, but there we are.

The catastrophe nearly wrecked his livelihood.

Now, Mike's got to get his business back on its feet.

Oh, bit of progress today, boys.

'I was at the Anglesey Show and I'd been there since seven o'clock in

'the morning setting up the stand, and then at half past nine,'

I had a phone call from my manager to say that next door was on fire.

Ten minutes later he phoned me up to say that flames

were shooting out the building, glass was popping.

I said to him to evacuate the building but lock the shop,

make sure there's nobody in the shop...

..which he did.

The whole shop was smoke damaged.

This has never happened to us in 59 years of trading.

We decided to rebuild.

-You've taken the ceilings down from over there.

-Yup.

Good.

The chip shop fire next door caused over £750,000 worth of stock damage.

Mike's now got to get selling new stock,

to get this father-and-son business back in business.

I've been here since I was in a pram.

I know nothing else.

There was no school holidays,

my father expected me to be here, brushing the floors,

painting, washing vans.

That was it. My father started this business in 1956,

as he reminded me every day, with £52, 1 shilling and 6p.

So, you know, it's...

We have to carry on. We have to carry on.

My father would expect me to carry on.

Mike's shop is in Llangefni, the second largest town on the island,

home to around 5,000 people.

It's also home to 21-year-old Khethiwe Ncube.

She came here at the age of six from Zimbabwe,

when her father started work with the RAF.

The island is now her home,

so much so that she's set her heart on a title -

that of Miss Anglesey & Gwynedd in the Miss Wales beauty pageant.

This one is my best, to be honest.

-I love this one.

-Yeah, it's the best of them all.

-This one.

-Yeah, this one is the best.

Initially I just thought, you know,

it would be something fun to have a look at beauty pageants.

But the reason I picked Miss Wales specifically...

The reason I took an interest in that one

was because of all the charity work that they do.

I think it's a really proper, proper community here.

I think if you were to describe the meaning of a community,

I think Anglesey would be a great example

because everyone is all together, we're all friends.

The move from Africa has been a happy one.

Except perhaps for Anglesey weather.

The weather's a nightmare, to be honest. Yeah, it is.

We were used to maybe one jumper all your life!

But today you have to have a jumper every day.

Yeah.

For Khethiwe, the Miss Anglesey title

is up for grabs, and reality's setting in.

I'm getting... I'm getting really nervous.

Like, I didn't think I was going to get nervous,

but I know for a fact that when I go out on stage I'll be fine.

-Let me get my heels and give it a try.

-Yeah?

-You never know.

Let's do it!

My mum is going to get her heels on

and she's going to try the walk!

See how it goes.

I don't know if I've ever seen her do the walk!

I think I'll do your version of the walk.

You'll lose definitely!

Perched on the far north-west of Wales,

separated from the mainland for centuries,

Anglesey has long had a remote quality.

For some, this rugged wilderness is a solace.

For others, an inspiration.

For Druid and mortuary technician Kristoffer Hughes,

the island and its spiritual history are both.

These are all the people that I've loved and that I've lost.

So this is my little sister Rachel.

She died when she was 22 years old, seven years ago.

My dad's here, various friends and other people.

My nain, my grandmother, she's there.

And as far as I'm concerned,

they're a part of my story as much as I was a part of their story.

The memory of all these people who have lived and loved and fallen,

and grazed their knees and cried,

and had fabulous Christmases and summer holidays,

they inspire me as well.

Without them, I'm almost nothing, I suppose.

Kris's day job as a mortuary technician

makes death part of daily life.

I work for Her Majesty's Coroner.

So I care for the deceased of whichever area

I'm called to work in,

whichever part of the country I'm called to work in.

But I also care for the bereaved as well, who are acutely bereaved.

And that's a very fickle,

highly emotional state that people find themselves within,

without any warning whatsoever.

So generally when they receive that news that somebody has died,

either tragically, by accident or by any other means,

I'm almost the next person that they see.

I consider that my professional life inspires

and informs my spiritual life.

The bottom of my world fell out when Rachel died.

Your heart explodes into a red mist,

and you just hope that one day when it falls

that something will be there to catch it.

And, of course, it is eventually.

Grief, it settles.

It finds a home within you somewhere

and then it becomes assimilated into the process of living.

We live, and by living, we honour those who've gone before.

And I always try and consider that what is remembered, lives.

Like the ancestors before them,

those who live on Anglesey have all shared one thing in common.

These islanders live and work in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Mary will usually say to me when I get up in the morning about 6:20am,

"How are you getting to work today?

"Are you going in the car, are you going on the bike?"

I say, "Well, I'll just open the curtains.

"Oh, I'm going to fly into work."

Paul Cox is an overseer for the Royal Navy in Holyhead Boatyard,

ten miles away from his home.

Now spring is here, when the weather's right,

this is his commute to work.

My wife sometimes says, "You know, it takes you quite a while sometimes

"to set yourself up. Is it really worth it?"

And every time I'm up there I say, "Oh, yes, it is."

It certainly is.

It's something you're not expecting to be doing on a Monday morning

going off to work.

In a way it is like surfing,

you're there and you're riding the wave to a point.

Obviously I'm not in it, but you're just riding on the wave,

and you just go with it.

I sometimes have a bit of a play at a couple of thousand feet above the boatyard.

As long as I look at my watch and it's not eight o'clock, I'm fine.

But as soon as eight o'clock comes,

I've got to have my feet on the ground.

Once I land, I usually just fold up the wing, walk into the yard,

go to my office, unhook myself from the para-motor,

put that into the side of the office,

get my shirt and my trousers on, put my shoes on

and power up my computer and I'm ready for work.

That's my usual start to the day.

There's definitely no better way to go to work.

15 miles away in Llangefni,

another islander is also aware of what the place has to offer.

For Khethiwe, it's an affinity with her native country

that makes it so important to represent her island.

Sort of like in Africa, you know,

people see each other as family members.

People that they don't even know,

if you walk past them on the street,

you always speak to them like you've known them for ages.

Like, "How are you? How is your family?" Everything like that.

So I think it's really nice that I've moved to a place like Anglesey

which is just like that and I want to be able to

keep doing community work to help people,

to encourage people to just carry on taking care of each other,

like they did in Zimbabwe, like they do here in Anglesey, you know?

Like, when you walk past on the street,

someone's always going to smile at you, no matter

what kind of day they're having.

In Zimbabwe I used to just talk to random strangers

when I was a little kid and I've come here,

everybody is talking to me and asking me about myself,

and I ask them about themselves.

It's quite nice like that,

just to treat people how you want to be treated, really.

This community spirit has helped Mike Williams fight to keep the

family business going.

And it's moving onto the next generation,

as 18-year-old son Daniel starts to learn the ropes.

It's nice to see father and son working together.

It is, yes.

-To be honest...

-The staff are wonderful.

..his father was a gentleman.

I'll be honest with you, Michael is the same.

Through the aftermath of the fire,

the people of Anglesey have carried on buying.

He's fighting back,

and he owes it to his island customers.

The people of Anglesey have rallied round,

they've helped me and they've kept my business going.

And they didn't want me to fail.

With its 130 miles of coastline,

it's no surprise that Anglesey people have often had a close affinity with the sea.

For centuries, ships have passed close to its northern shores

en route to Liverpool.

The journey from Anglesey to the Mersey

has always been one of fast tides and shifting sandbanks.

Since the 18th century,

Anglesey sailors have helped pilots board ships at Lynas Point to guide

them on this last part of the journey to Liverpool Docks.

Pilots still board at Amlwch Port today,

but where there were pilot boats aplenty, now things are different.

But one man is striving to keep things afloat,

in more ways than one.

Rob Holloway does two jobs

to try and carry on this old island tradition.

Still having to do another job to help things out, but, yeah,

we're getting there.

Apart from running his framing business,

he's one of the last two left on

the island who ferry pilots onto waiting tankers.

So the pilots will come down here. It's always been known as...

We've just got that little bit of shelter in the horseshoe.

Let me show you on the map, there.

You can see how dangerous it is for shipwrecks in North Wales,

look how many there are!

OK, so there, that's Point Lynas.

There's Amlwch, and this is usually the area we operate.

So if you think now you've got strong south-westerly gales,

obviously coming from the south, even due west.

This area here, if you get the ships close enough in,

you've got plenty of shelter.

So that the waves obviously won't be as big as further out to sea,

so that we can safely get a pilot on board and then he can get that ship

into Liverpool and discharge its cargo.

It's an unpredictable job, with unpredictable hours.

And today's no exception.

So we've definitely got the Aberdeen.

She's an oil tanker, a fairly regular one.

What time will you be back, do you know?

-Eh, don't know, love.

-One of them?

Yeah.

-There might be fog, there might not be.

-OK.

We've got the one, as far as we know, but there might be more,

-so you know the score.

-OK.

I'll... The usual - put your tea on a plate.

Yes, stick it on a plate,

-or give it to the dog when it gets frisky.

-OK.

SHE LAUGHS

The dogs are better fed than you, aren't they, sometimes?

At the Miss Wales competition in Port Talbot,

rehearsals are underway,

and Khethiwe's feeling the pressure.

Khethiwe Ncube, 21, Anglesey!

I'm not really tired, just sort of like,

I feel like a lot has been happening.

When I say my name and my age, and I say "Anglesey",

because we've got to shout it, and

when I'm saying the word "Anglesey",

it sounds like...

my voice goes a bit high and a bit...

like it's getting strained at the end.

But I want it to be like... That's the big word, though,

it's like, "Anglesey!"

Like, you know, that's where I'm from,

and I'm happy to be here representing it.

So I don't want to... Do you know what, I'll just say it,

it doesn't matter. If my voice sounds bad, then, oh, well.

-At Amlwch Port...

-Morning.

..two pilots have just arrived from Liverpool, ready to board.

There's a tanker ready and waiting for them two miles offshore.

-ON RADIO:

-Control. Morning, Graham.

Yeah, good morning to you. That's us outbound towards the tanker.

We've got to get them out to the ship,

and that ship has got to get the tide.

If it misses the tide, you're looking at humongous costs,

sometimes like £15,000 an hour.

It's going to cost. So if it, you know...

Times 12, that's a lot of bucks, until it gets in at the next tide.

The Liverpool Pilotage Service on Anglesey

has been running since 1766,

but now with far fewer crew than before.

Only two. Me and Graham are the last ones.

Me and Graham, I suppose, are the two ancient mariners.

250 years of history.

Who wouldn't be glad and proud to be part of that, you know?

We've obviously got to do it as quick as we possibly can.

Tankers and cargo ships pass through

this busy shipping lane to Liverpool

from all over the world.

Today's tanker, the Aberdeen,

has travelled from the North Sea

carrying 80,000 tonnes of crude oil.

It is quite a tricky thing.

You're deliberately crashing a small, fast vessel

alongside a large ship.

We are responsible for them until they get on the deck of that ship.

By matching the tanker's exact speed,

all they have to do now is board.

Sometimes you can see how difficult it is, when they...

A little bit of a heart-stopping moment, a little bit of a situation,

a slip, or the ladder's not quite right.

I think the limit is nine metres,

but the guys have to go up a rope ladder,

certainly on the big tanks and some of the box boats.

If that ship is rolling as well,

and it's freezing cold, pouring rain,

you know, your hands are numb, you could quite easily...

..end up in a mishap.

Now, with the pilot safe onboard,

for Rob it's back to the day job.

In Port Talbot, for Khethiwe,

the moment of reckoning is nearly here.

I just need to wash my hands...

SHE LAUGHS

..because I've been trying make-up, and I don't want to, like,

you know, put my hands on my dress.

But that's just about it. I'm...

A quick brush of the hair and

bit of Vaseline on the lips, I'm ready to go.

-Which way are we going?

-Girls, girls. We're this way.

-Laura.

-Laura!

-We're this way.

-This way.

-Well, we're having a pep talk!

-Oh.

We're having a pep talk.

CROWD CHEER

And as Khethiwe gets her words out...

Khethiwe Ncube, 21, Anglesey!

..she wins the title of Miss Anglesey & Gwynedd.

-HOST:

-Khethiwe Ncube!

Now, there's a new job on the horizon.

That was... It was, like, really nice.

It was just like, "Aw, lovely," and the cheers and everything.

I feel great, and I think it's time to start

doing some work on Anglesey now, see what we can do.

Back in Africa, everybody was always taking care of each other,

so I want to take that with me

whether I'm in Africa or I'm in Anglesey.

I want to make a difference, because this is where I live.

On the shores of the River Braint on Anglesey's south coast,

Kris the Druid takes time out.

Life and death live side-by-side in his daily job.

Here, he gets to celebrate a Druid's connection with the cycle of life.

These offerings have come from my garden.

One of them is my most favourite flower,

which some people would argue is a weed, which is the red campion.

But I find it very hard to see anything

as beautiful as a red campion.

And the wine is made from elderberries

that have come from this land.

I practice personal rituals that I do every day, just as Kristoffer.

And for that, I don't need an outfit.

These are the rituals that I find personally the most fulfilling.

They are the ones that nobody sees, that nobody witnesses.

And it's that transformative quality

that brings to my life so much joy.

And it's locked in with this place,

with this island.

I think sometimes we can become so

caught up in how busy everyday life can be,

that we sometimes forget to take time out for ourselves.

But even this chilled-out Druid has big plans ahead.

I am a man on a mission. I am a very ambitious man, as well.

But also I have missions and visions for the Druid Order

as a seat of learning,

and to rekindle the ancient seat of learning that Anglesey was.

And that's been recognised, which is lovely,

but there's still lots of stuff and work to be done.

And the other one is to draw people to this place,

so that they can share, just,

if it's an iota of the love that we share for this place,

because how can you not share this?

Next time, two descendants of the first Marquess of Anglesey

revisit their former home.

You know, it wasn't called the back passage.

It was called the blind passage.

Oh, this is the blind passage!

HE LAUGHS

In Holyhead, one woman's determined

to get her first proper job.

I'll do anything, even if it's start off scrubbing toilets, I will.

And Kris celebrates the Summer Solstice...

whatever the weather.

We had heard that this year summer was going to be on a Tuesday.

So it looks as if we've missed it!