Winter The Brecon Beacons with Iolo Williams

This has got to be one of the most stunning views

in the whole of the Brecon Beacons National Park.

I'm standing here on Mynydd Troed, which, roughly translated,

means "a mountain shaped like a foot".

Behind me is Llangorse Lake -

it's the biggest natural lake in South Wales.

And then in the distance behind that is Pen y Fan.

At 886 metres above sea level,

it's the highest peak in the whole of southern Britain.

For many, the Brecon Beacons is a playground,

but for me it's a place to escape.

A place to be alone with nature.

And this is a big park,

it's 500 square miles

and it extends from the English border, ten miles to the east,

all the way over to Carmarthenshire, 30 miles away to the west.

And it's not just mountains - it's historical sites

and a wide range of fabulous landscapes.

In this series, I'm exploring the magic of the Beacons -

its changing beauty over the seasons,

its wonderful wildlife

and its people.

The Brecon Beacons is rightly famous for its mountains

and its harsh upland environment

and it doesn't get much worse than a day like this in deep midwinter.

Now, I'm on the eastern edge of the park in the Black Mountains,

heading up towards one of the peaks, Twmpa, up there

and this weather wasn't forecast,

but that's mountain weather for you - constantly changing.

'I know from experience that the uplands can be

'very different to the lowlands, particularly during winter.

'While conditions on Twmpa's summit are extreme,

'it's a sunny day in the valley near Hay-on-Wye.

'Much of the Black Mountains

'in the eastern part of the Brecon Beacons National Park

'are 600 metres or 2,000 feet above sea level.

'It's a wild landscape.

'But in fact, in common with the rest of the Beacons,

'it's land which has been shaped by people...'

COW LOWS

'..and this has been going on ever since

'cutting and digging tools were invented during the Stone Age.

'The uplands had already been cleared of trees

'at least 3,000 years before 12th-century monks

'had arrived in the Black Mountains

'to farm the land and build Llanthony Abbey.

'It's one of around 250 historical gems that exist in the National Park.

'The Beacons is and always has been

'a landscape that's been worked by people.

'Wildlife has had to adapt to the many artificial habitats

'that have been created in the National Park.

'And the Brecon Beacons does have some great wildlife.

'Much of the Beacons is upland moorland,

'but around 13% of the National Park is covered by trees.

'I'm travelling to a wood below Sugar Loaf Mountain

'just outside Abergavenny.

'It's called St Mary's Vale

'and it's one of the oldest woods in the Beacons.

'But even this isn't a natural wild wood.

'The fantastic shapes that you see on many of the trees

'are the result of people managing woodland for timber and charcoal

'to be used in the coal and steel industries of South Wales.'

Look at this. The weather has changed again.

That's winter in the Brecon Beacons for you. Driving rain now.

But I wanted to come and have a closer look at this tree.

Just look at the shape of that! And this, of course,

is a tree that, over hundreds of years,

has been coppiced several times

and what that's done, it's left you with this unique shape.

This base is going to be, what, 300 years old, maybe even more

and relatively speaking, these shoots here are much younger,

maybe 100 years old.

If they were still working now,

they would come back, they would coppice here again,

it would grow again and it would be coppiced over and over.

'A lot of the landscape in the southern parts of the National Park

'has been shaped by old industries.

'Spoil tips of old ironworks and coalmines

'are still visible in many areas,

'and these are gradually being reclaimed by nature.

'One of the transport routes of the old industries

'is the Monmouthshire Brecon Canal.

'It is the only canal in the Brecon Beacons

'and was built over 200 years ago to move coal, lime and wool

'between rural mid Wales and the industrial south.

'This path near Llangynidr, around ten miles south of Brecon,

'has many locks to cope with the rising height of the canal

'as it makes its way up the Usk Valley.

'A section of the canal between two locks

'is being drained for maintenance work.

'Once drained, it's time for Mark Prosser and Chris Burroughs

'of the Canal And River Trust to jump in and inspect.'

Mind your step, Chris.

-All right, lads?

-Hello. How's things?

-What's going on?

Just doing some general maintenance to the lock gates, we are.

-What, these gates behind me here?

-Yes.

So, would you do this fairly regularly,

just look at the maintenance work and...?

Yeah, go through in the winter and just do general maintenance

because, in the summer,

we don't want to spoil the boaters' holidays and drain sections.

We're not out to stop people having their holidays, you know.

It's an amazing operation, mind,

the way you've drained this particular pool here.

Yeah, well, fair play,

over 200 years ago, they designed it very well.

'The canal's heyday was during the early 1800s.

'At its peak, 150,000 tonnes of coal

'were transported on the canal each year on barges towed by horses.'

-All clear up here.

-Right-oh.

-No fish, lads?

-No. Only small ones.

They'll survive in the water.

Right, yeah. I'll leave you to get on, boys. Nice to see you both.

-Take care.

-Cheers, thanks very much. Thanks very much.

-I think someone has lost a welly.

-Yeah.

There are hundreds of streams and rivers

coming down off the high tops of the Brecon Beacons,

but the biggest and the most famous is this one, the River Usk.

This is the middle section here,

it's not as narrow and not as wild as it is higher up,

and it's not as deep and not as meandering as it is further east.

And this lovely old bridge here, this is Llangynidr Bridge,

a very narrow old bridge

and this is a great spot for looking out for birds

like dippers and grey wagtails.

They love these rocks here.

'January is far too early for grey wagtails and dippers to nest.

'Goosanders, however, are already displaying and mating.

'The male will soon be leaving Wales

'to spend the spring and summer in Scandinavia,

'leaving the female to build a nest and raise her chicks on her own.

'I find that the winter

'is an interesting time to explore the Beacons.

'It's relatively quiet,

'the weather conditions also vary a great deal from day to day,

'and between the lowlands and the uplands,

'making it challenging and rewarding.

'And because most of the plants have died back,

'the small amount of wildlife that is around is easier to see.

'Much of the lowland in the Usk Valley is farmland,

'and they say that there are

'3,500 miles of hedgerows in the Brecon Beacons.

'This one is being laid in a traditional way by Trefor Prothero

'and his son Gwilym at a farm near Brecon.'

-Trevor?

-Ah, hello.

-How are you?

-Nice to meet you.

-Good to see you, boy.

-What a nice job!

-Thank you.

-Cracking!

I tell you what, I've always wanted to hedge lay.

Go on, you keep going

because I know it's going to get dark before long, so you keep going.

Now, I was always told that Breconshire people

have got their own particular style of hedge laying.

Yeah, well, every county has their own style

and this is the traditional Breconshire style.

So, Montgomeryshire would have a different style,

Radnorshire would have a different style?

Yeah, Radnorshires don't use these stakes

or don't use these hetherings.

-And that's what you call what you put on top, the hazel?

-Mostly hazel.

-And that is just to hold the hedge down?

-Yes.

We put one of these through every stake.

Right, so that gets shoved in.

-Push them in behind the stake a bit.

-Oh, I see,

-then you just bend it in and out the stakes then?

-Yeah, weave them in.

-Oh, that's nice. It's almost like basket weaving, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-And this is a job that you just do in the winter?

-Yes.

From sort of November until...

-Well, the end of March is the cut-off date by law now.

-Why?

Is that cos of all the birds nesting and everything else, is it?

Yes, yes, the birds nesting.

If I lived here, I'd ask you to teach me how it's done,

but I don't - I live in Montgomeryshire

and I don't want to take Breconshire style back to Montgomeryshire.

You'll have to come down!

It would confuse the locals, I think, that would, Trefor.

'Although much of the wood that Trefor puts into the hedge is dead,

'at the base he has split and bent the original hedge bushes.

'During the spring and summer, these will grow through the weave

'and create a fantastic thick hedge

'which will be a terrific place for wildlife,

'and it looks a lot better than machine-cut hedge

'or a barbed-wire fence.

'Trefor's hedge at Llanfrynach

'is on the edge of what some call the Brecon Beacons proper,

'the Central Beacons, and the highest peak, Pen y Fan.

'The north-facing slopes are steep,

'having been carved out by glaciers during the Ice Age.

'The lower slopes on the south side, however, are far gentler.

'On a snowy winter's day, they are mostly hidden by low cloud.

'Few venture up the peaks in this weather - not even a fox.

'There is more to find lower down.'

It's not every day you get into a staring match with a fox.

I've been watching a fox walking along the edge of the stream here.

I think it's a dog, it's quite a big fox in really good condition.

It's got a winter coat and a big, big bushy tail.

Obviously looking for food.

And every now and again, it has stopped and it has looked at me,

it has looked into my eyes.

It obviously knows that I'm here and he is sat over there

and then he has gone up a little bit now and this is actually a reservoir.

You wouldn't believe it now, but it's the Upper Neuadd Reservoir

and it has been drained for maintenance work along the dam here

and usually the view from here -

bear in mind we are 1,500 feet up - is quite spectacular,

looking up towards Pen y Fan and the high tops, but the cloud is down.

It's not the best of days for the view,

but it's a brilliant day for watching a fox walking in the snow.

'I've noticed that snowy, wintry weather often draws out

'usually secretive animals into the open.

'The fact is, he's hungry and has to find food

'and he knows there is a lot of worms and grubs

'in the soft mud of the old reservoir bottom.

'The Brecon Beacons National Park has 18 reservoirs.

'They were built around 100 years ago to supply drinking water

'for the growing towns and cities of industrial South Wales.'

I've come over to the Taf Valley now,

or the Taff as it's often called,

and here you've got a succession of three reservoirs,

all of them providing water to Cardiff.

This is Llwyn Onn Reservoir

and on the far side over there you've got the main north-south route,

the A470, that really bisects the park itself.

'When it's full, Llwyn Onn holds 650 million gallons of water

'and with the rain that falls in the Beacons,

'I'd imagine it's full pretty much most of the time.'

You can tell there's plenty of fish in this reservoir

because there's lots of fish-eating birds here.

Way out on the water over there is a male goosander,

but far more interesting is this tree, this old larch here,

right by the water's edge, because it is full of cormorants.

I think there are seven or eight in there at the moment

and it's the ideal spot for them

because you've got three reservoirs here in all,

all of them full of fish,

so the cormorants can plop into the water,

catch a fish and then they can perch

up on this tree here, dry their feathers.

Once they get hungry again,

all they've got to do is pop back down into the water.

'Many think of cormorants as sea birds,

'but while you do see them along the coast,

'they are just as happy inland, on lakes, reservoirs and rivers.

'I've noticed that they've increased in number inland

'during the past 30 years, but no-one really knows why.

'I guess anywhere where there is plenty of fish.'

There are lots of conifer plantations within the park

and a lot of it, actually, is planted in association with these reservoirs.

This is the Taf Valley here and below me are the Taf Reservoirs

and you can see the conifers -

just about make them out on the far hill there.

And this was a mature plantation here, too.

What they will do is they will plant them

and then they will cut them down after about 40 years

and that wood will be taken off to be used

and then you are left with fairly bare, open areas

with a few old trees standing

and this is the perfect location then

for a really, really rare bird -

only maybe eight or ten birds come to Wales every year

and they come in the winter.

'And here it is. It's a great grey shrike.

'Now, it may look like a small, timid bird,

'but don't be fooled by its appearance.

'This is a ruthless hunter.'

This is the tree that the bird was on earlier

and what it's doing is it's using that as a kind of a lookout post.

It's got several of them here,

but this one appears to be its favoured one

and it's looking down for prey. And at this time of year,

prey for it would be probably mice and voles,

and at a time when there is plenty of food,

what it will do is it will find a hawthorn bush or a barbed-wire fence

and it will put mice and voles and large insects on the spines

and keep them there for when he's hungry and he can't find food.

And that is the reason why another name for this is the butcher bird.

This one has caught a bird.

It may well be a robin - it's the commonest bird here.

After storing its catch in its secret larder,

it returns to clean itself.

You can just about see its hooked beak,

which it uses to tear up its prey.

And he's not the only bird that's using tree stumps.

A great spotted woodpecker is looking for insects in the dead wood.

As you head west from the Central Beacons,

you enter the Fforest Fawr area.

Fforest Fawr is Welsh for great forest

and it was once a royal hunting ground.

In the Middle Ages, a forest was a place set aside for hunting -

it didn't necessarily describe a large woodland.

Although the original deer stock died out more than two centuries ago,

deer have returned to the park during the past 30 years.

(I'm watching a group of red deer just up on the bank,

(under the trees over there.)

And these come from a local farmer

who was keeping deer and they escaped -

a handful of deer escaped in the 1980s,

and some people say that other deer, including a stag,

escaped from Margam Park near Port Talbot,

worked their way up the Neath Valley, which is all the way...

would be maybe the best part of 15-odd miles, 20 miles maybe,

and joined this herd here.

'No-one is quite sure of the number of red deer

'in the Brecon Beacons National Park,

'but experts reckon this is the only wild red-deer herd

'in the whole of mainland Wales.

'In the south part of Fforest Fawr,

'the landscape changes from open moorland to deep gorges

'cut by fast-flowing rivers and wonderful waterfalls.

I've been to all of them and they are all stunning in full flow.

'There is Sgwd Clun-Gwyn on the River Mellte.

'Its Welsh name is said to mean "fall of the white meadow"...

'..but I have a feeling it may well be a case of lost in translation,

'as I suspect the word "gwyn" - Welsh for "white" -

'refers to the white water.

'Like many of the falls in the area,

it's surrounded by fabulous ancient woodland.

'Sgwd yr Eira on the River Hepste, a tributary of the Mellte,

'also hints at white water.

'The name "Eira" is the Welsh word for "snow",

'so it's "the falls of snow".

'It's one of the waterfalls in the Beacons

'that you can actually walk behind.'

This area is aptly named Waterfall Country

because, within an hour of me here,

there are more than 20 individual waterfalls

and this one, Henrhyd Falls, is certainly the most impressive

and the tallest, too,

and at 90 feet - that's 27 metres tall -

it's the highest waterfall in southern Britain.

And on a day like this, following a night of heavy rain,

it's at its most magnificent.

At the top of the waterfall is a thin layer of very hard rock,

and that's called the farewell rock,

a name given to it by the local coal miners

because when they were digging deep underground,

if they hit this layer of sandstone rock,

they knew that they could wave farewell to finding any coal.

'I'm always fascinated by waterfalls. They form on rivers where there are

'different rock types next to each other.

'The farewell sandstone rock at the top of Henrhyd Falls

'is much harder than mudstone at the bottom.

'As the mudstone erodes, the falls get gradually taller.

'And geology plays a big part in how the Beacons look.

'Many of the high peaks of the Beacons

'have an iconic flat-top appearance

'and this is because they are made of very hard sandstone

'which is resistant to weathering

'compared to the softer stones on the surrounding slopes.

'In the southern part of the Beacons,

'the prevalent rock changes to limestone,

'and because of the stone's solubility in water,

'it forms caves underground.

'These are some of the most impressive caves in Europe.

'This one below the uplands of the Upper Swansea Valley

'has around 50 miles of passages,

'rising and falling to depths of 300 metres.

'The cave is called Ogof Ffynnon Ddu.

'With me is cave guide Anna Stickland.'

-Anna, what an amazing place underground!

-It is,

it's really beautiful and so varied, as well,

and often I'll take little kids caving

and they'll be quite nervous about being underground,

think it's going to be tight

or just kind of a muddy hole is often the impression people have

and they don't realise how varied it is and how beautiful it is.

And Ogof Ffynnon Ddu here, this is a huge cave system.

It is, yeah, we've only seen a tiny, tiny part of it,

but, yeah, it's a big system. It's also a very deep system

because at the moment we are quite low down,

near where the water comes out into the river,

but you can follow it all the way through

and you can come out on top of the mountains,

so as well as being lots of passage, it's also quite a height change.

And I always think of caves as something...

things that were formed millions of years ago,

because it is still going on all the time now.

Yeah, it is, it's a continual process and so, yeah,

originally it was formed millions of years ago

and just through tiny gaps and cracks in the rock,

so where you've got the bedding planes

and you've got the fault lines.

And so water can get into the tiny cracks

and gradually it will get bigger and bigger,

initially through a sort of corrosive action

and then once the water can start to flow,

you'll get erosion going on

and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger.

'There are literally hundreds of caves in the Beacons

'and while some of them are open to the public and easy to explore,

'most are only accessible to hardened cavers.

'And in these hidden chambers there are stunning sights deep underground.

'West of Fforest Fawr lie the Carmarthen Fans.

'Many of the mountains in the Brecon Beacons are called fans.

'It's simply the Welsh word for a beacon

'and the name Beacons dates back

'to a time when people would light fires on visible peaks

'to warn of attacks from intruders.

'I'm with National Park warden Judith Harvey,

who lives just below these magnificent peaks.

'She's taking me to one of the finest views in the whole of the Beacons.'

Judith, what a place! What a place!

And we've got Llyn y Fan Fach below us, and Fan Foel.

Now, that is the highest mountain in Carmarthenshire.

Yes, that's right, yes.

Yes, because we've come over the border now, into Carmarthenshire.

Looking at it this way, as well, it is stunning.

I love these rolling hills here.

Yes, and then down in the valley,

all the patchwork of farmland and hedges and trees.

And all these houses and smallholdings, you know,

-you can only see from up on high like this.

-Absolutely, yeah.

We often think about national parks worldwide as places empty of people,

you know, places there for the landscape, for the wildlife,

but, of course, Brecon Beacons is very different, isn't it?

It is very different in that the park authority

owns a lot of the land, we own the land that we are standing on here,

which is very unusual for a British national park,

but, obviously, people, farmers, have got interests up here.

This is common land, so farmers have got the right to graze sheep

and, in some cases, cattle and even geese up here,

though we never see geese on the hill these days!

And then there's the pressure from walkers and tourism.

You know, we've walked a path that has been made by the National Park

to try and limit the pressure of erosion, so it's a balancing act.

We've got to try and accommodate all sorts of pressures

within this very, very precious landscape.

-Somebody once told me that this is the roof of South Wales.

-Yes.

And it is right because from here

you can see virtually everywhere in South Wales.

'It's one of my favourite sights in the Beacons.

'It's a place where you can be totally alone.

'As Judith said, the National Park's character

'comes as much from the people who live and work in the Beacons

'as the natural forces that shaped it,

'and on the slopes of Mynydd Myddfai near Llandovery,

'Kate Mobbs-Morgan is one of the many people

'who make it such a special place.'

Walk on a little bit.

And again.

Back, love.

Good boy.

Back, love.

-Kate? Hiya.

-Hi.

I've got to tell you, you've made an old man very happy.

Watching you at work here took me back to when I was a little lad,

when they still used horses in woodlands in mid Wales,

-but this must be unique in the park now, is it?

-It is unusual.

I would say maybe two people working horses in forestry

in this locality, yes.

But it's lovely to watch and I love the way that you work WITH the horse,

talking all the time, the horse listening all the time, as well.

He is listening. Sometimes he blurs out the white noise in between,

but he is listening for his commands all the time.

And it's the WAY that you talk, as well, it's as if it isn't a horse,

it's a mate working with you in the woods.

We work together all the time,

so it is like having a friend working with me, so yeah.

What is the horse? What breed is he?

He's an Ardennes. They come from France and Belgium.

He was homebred in the UK, but they are a French horse, really.

-He's a lovely, lovely horse.

-Thank you.

-And incredibly strong.

-Yes.

What's the advantage, then? Why use a horse? Why not get tractors in?

On sites like this, we can come into the steep sites,

we don't need big tracks cut into the woodlands,

we can just work between the trees.

So something like this, where you are selective thinning,

just taking out a few trees, we can just work

within the environment without causing any damage.

And again, working on the steep sites

where it's difficult to get in with machinery,

it is just as quick to use a horse.

Next time, it will be spring in the Brecon Beacons,

a season when both the landscape and wildlife wakes up.