Summer The Brecon Beacons with Iolo Williams

The Brecon Beacons National Park covers an area of over 500 square miles

and extends over nine counties in the southern half of Wales.

It has terrific scenery and notoriously challenging landscapes.

For many, it's a playground.

For me, it's a place to escape.

A place to be alone with nature.

Over the seasons, I'm exploring the magic of the Beacons.

SHEEP BLEAT

Emyr Williams and his son, Morgan, are gathering sheep off the

Black Mountain foothills, in the western part of the Brecon Beacons.

It's the last week in June and the sheep need to be sheared.

There are over 1,000 farms in the Brecon Beacons

and many of them are dependent on sheep for their survival.

-Hello.

-How are you, all right?

-Not too bad, yourself?

Nice to see you gathering sheep on horseback.

Aye, not many doing it now.

No, I'll tell you what, I walk the hills and you see them all on quads.

I just don't see people on horseback anymore.

But this is the way it would've been done for years, isn't it?

That's right, yeah. My father before me, that's all I remember, really.

We do use a quad, obviously.

And this is getting them off the hill now to go down for shearing.

Down for shearing now then, yeah.

-I bet the horses and the dog love it!

-They enjoy it, yes.

The sheep appear to know their way. I'll walk with you.

-That's right, yeah.

-So, you're saying your father

-and your grandad have done this before you?

-Yeah.

And I see you've got your son with you?

-He comes along, he enjoys it, yeah.

-Are you enjoying it?

-Yeah.

Ah, good boy, da fachgen. Well done you, well done you.

You go on, I know you've got a lot of work,

I'll try and catch up with you down the bottom here now.

What's the advantage then, if most people go out on a quad

and you still go on horses?

What's the big advantage of using a horse?

Well, because it's quieter.

Personally, I think it's more thorough.

You tend to miss the odd ewe and lamb hiding in nooks

and crannies, whereas you can look around as well on these.

Horse's dying to go! Absolutely loving it, absolutely loving it!

SHEEP BLEAT

To make the job easier, Emyr is shepherding his flock down a narrow

bridle way, next to the Sawdde Fechan, the river that eventually

makes its way to the Tywi.

These are ewes with this year's lambs.

After the ewes have been sheared they'll all go back to hills

to graze and Emyr and his son will have to gather them again during

August, when the lambs are ready to be separated from their mothers.

Thank you very much for that, cheers! Good luck with the shearing!

-Thank you very much.

-Ta-ra, now!

The Black Mountain area of the Brecon Beacons is the wildest

and the most remote part of the National Park.

On the Carmarthen Fan peaks you can get further away from a road

than anywhere else in the park.

It's a perfect place to raise a fox family.

I spent so much time, when I was a youngster,

out on the hill and in the woods around my home in Mid Wales,

looking at foxes on a lovely summer's evening like this.

And there's a fox's earth, I say fox's earth, it's actually

an old badger's set - that's quite common with foxes,

especially out on a hill like this and there's three cubs.

One of them is a bit of a bully, that's probably the most dominant

cub, it's jumping on the backs of all the others and sending them

back down underground.

This is a really good time to come and watch them,

cos they don't wander far from the earth.

The cubs are at least two months old now

and the parents will be out looking for food somewhere

and they'll hunt right up onto the high tops if they have to

and earlier on in spring they will have been feeding on carrion.

There'll be a lot of dead lambs,

there'll be a lot of dead sheep up here.

They'll be picking up now, I'd imagine,

mainly things like mice and voles, especially in these wetter areas.

That'll be full of mice and voles now and beetles

and, when it's wet, earthworms as well.

That actually makes up most of their food and the cubs will just hang

around and play by the den.

They'll work out a kind of hierarchy, they'll fight, they'll play-fight

and that, of course, will be useful for later on in life when they

themselves are learning how to hunt.

Then, the adults will come back, probably after dark

and they'll regurgitate the food for the youngsters to eat.

But it's a pretty idyllic life for these youngsters at the moment.

When they grow up, of course, come September time, they'll get

kicked out and then life becomes quite a bit more dangerous for them.

It's anyone's guess how many foxes there are in the Beacons

but they're everywhere and with so many sheep and lambs

on the hills it's inevitable that many of these foxes will be culled.

While hunting with hounds has been illegal now for over ten years,

farmers can still legally shoot them.

The hills of Mynydd Myddfai are in the north western

part of the Brecon Beacons, near Llandovery.

The slopes fall into the beautiful, rural valleys of Carmarthenshire.

It's a place that's renowned for the legendary Physicians of Myddfai.

They were 12th century herbalists who identified healing properties in

the plants growing in the area.

The Physicians of Myddfai, remarkably, we've got

their manuscripts, so we've got their recipes.

Not only do they tell us the plant and what they're used for

but they tell us how they made it.

Lara Bean grew up in Myddfai

and the local heritage in medicine inspired her to become a herbalist.

So, we're looking at a hedgerow here, what are you looking for?

Are you just looking for common hedgerow plants?

Yeah, anything basically, anything that has a medicinal value.

So, here, for instance, we've got one of the most popular herbs

that's used traditionally in this area, which is elderflower.

This one is one you might have come across it talking to elderly folk,

they'd talk about it for winter ills.

-You've come across that?

-No, is it colds and things like that?

Completely, yeah, yes. So, they'd make it into a wine.

The white of the flower tells you that it's got flavonoids in it,

which are anti-inflammatory.

The berries, which we'll be coming on now, those are purple, which

tells you that they have antioxidants, anthocyanin,

which are those strong antioxidants.

So, basically, a superfood

but also really remarkably they've recently found this

particular constituent in elderberries that's called antivirin

and it basically stops the virus from reproducing in the body.

Scientists, these days,

are looking in great detail for its antiviral properties.

-Wow!

-And particularly for some of the super-flues.

And this is a common hedgerow plant?!

I see you've got meadowsweet, we've got

meadowsweet growing in the hedgerows.

Common plant now, of course, in high summer.

Meadowsweet's an interesting one because it shows the connection

between orthodox medicine and plants.

So, one of the plants that they extracted the active

constituent, aspirin, and now it's just synthetically made.

But interestingly, one of the main uses of meadowsweet, a very safe

home use for meadowsweet is for digestive problems.

I would use it in my practice for stomach ulcers.

It's been claimed that the birth of modern medicine can be traced

back to the Physicians of Myddfai.

It may or may not be true but it's a nice thought that some of our

modern day cures for headaches,

coughs and sneezes have their roots in this stunning part of the Beacons.

What I like most about the Brecon Beacons National Park is that

it's big enough for plenty of quiet places off the beaten track.

One of those locations is Penwyllt, in the Fforest Fawr area.

Penwyllt is Welsh for wild headland and it describes it perfectly.

The Beacons' Way footpath, which runs the entire

length of the national park, passes through this upland.

It's a terrain littered with outcrops of limestone and grit stone.

It's worth venturing off the path, just above Penwyllt here to come

and have a look at this area of limestone pavement.

It's worth coming here in summer because it's botanically very rich.

You can see wild thyme with its lovely purple flowers.

Bird's-foot-trefoil is here as well but you'll also get these

quite rare limestone specialists growing here.

And this is one of them, lily of the valley.

A plant that you often see in gardens but it's actually a wild flower.

And it's amazing to think that it grows here, nearly 1,500 feet,

that's almost 500 metres, above sea level on the calcareous soil

but that's where these grikes come in, these splits in the rock

because it provides the shelter that it needs from the wind and the rain

and the harsh conditions that you get up here, even sometimes

in the middle of summer.

This is a great place for common lizards as well.

It's a good place for a variety of reasons, really.

First of all, look at the rock, it's full of holes,

it's full of cracks, so the lizards can tuck away in there,

they can go underground as well over the winter months.

When they do emerge, especially on a day like this, they get not just the

warmth of the sun, cos bear in mind these are cold blooded animals,

but they get the warmth from the rocks as well.

The soil isn't very deep and I can feel the heat beneath me now

and that's really good for insects.

Plenty of insects and plenty of ants here

and funnily enough this one has got an insect crawling over its head.

It's just tried to eat it, I think it's got hold of it now.

Fan Gyhirych, part of the Fforest Fawr range,

is another quiet peak for a lovely summer walk.

It's an amphitheatre from which there are fabulous

views of the national park.

But at 725 metres, that's nearly 2,400 feet, conditions can change

dramatically by the time you've reached the summit,

even in the summer.

Visibility can reduce to a few metres in a matter of moments

and you can easily end up in difficulty.

There are four mountain rescue teams in the Brecon Beacons - Fan Gyhirych

and the north part of the Beacons is covered by the Brecon team.

There are around 50 volunteers who train weekly to be ready

for any conceivable accident.

Katie Garnett has been with the team for 30 years.

When I walk down that hill now, right,

I arrived here and I thought, "What the hell's going on here?!"

-It looked like a major incident.

-It gave you a shock!

It's an exercise, is it?

Yes, it is, yes and you see all our bright yellow jackets, which enable

us to see each other and also if a helicopter comes in,

if we're working with a rescue helicopter,

they love to be able to see who we are

and not be distracted by all the other people who've

come around to see what's going on.

One tail to the casualty, one tail to Nick.

What's going on now,

are you pretending someone's fallen off a cliff?

Yeah, there's a person who's fallen over the edge

and he's called for help.

We're setting systems to bring him up safely.

So, we're practicing putting in the stakes

to lower the stretcher safely.

-And the background here, there'll be all kind of jobs?

-Oh, everything!

Teachers, company directors, fitness fanatics, housewives, shop keepers,

you name it.

Lovely job, though, I'd imagine.

When you come out, especially in bad weather, at night maybe, and you save

lives - that must be lovely.

Oh, it's fantastic!

It is fantastic and we've had some really moving rescues but we've

also had some sad ones, as well, but that's when the team spirit brings

us all together and we all get together and we support each other.

What's the main reason people get lost or people get hurt

and you have to get called out?

I think underestimating the conditions.

You're coming out today,

it's been a beautiful day down in the valley,

you're coming up here and you could be in shorts

and trainers or something

and if you didn't have a warm jacket then you'd be feeling that

wind and if you happened to have an accident, if you slip, if you

trip, twist an ankle, it's not a serious injury but you can't walk.

Then, you're at the mercy of the weather

and waiting for somebody either to report that you're missing or

that you've managed to call for help somehow or other.

It's amazing to think that these are all volunteers,

each and every one of them.

And they'll get, what, roughly 100 call outs a year

and, unfortunately, of those maybe three or four are usually fatalities.

I'm really glad that they're out there, I really am!

While the Brecon Beacons is famous for its challenging mountains

and open moorland, it has a wide range of wild habitats.

In the summer, wet pools in particular become a hive of activity.

This is Traeth Mawr, it's a lovely little bit of common land,

it is really, with a succession of pools.

You can see Pen y Fan and Corn Du up there behind me

and at this time of year, especially when the sun is out,

it's a great place to come and see damselflies and dragonflies too.

Now, I know some of them but I don't know all of them, but over there

Keith Noble, the County Recorder, is a man who knows all of them.

Hello, Keith!

-Hi, Iolo!

-You seen much?

It's good today, there are lots of four-spotted chasers buzzing about.

So, these are all the same species, four-spotted chasers?

Today, yes, we've just got the one.

Later in the season, we'll get more coming out here.

You are a dragonfly recorder?

Every county in Britain has a dragonfly recorder

and their business is to see what dragonflies

they can find themselves and encourage other people to

submit their sightings too.

So, I have about 20 people feed in what they see to me and then I jot

down everything I can see and this gets fed through to the local record

centre and the British Dragonfly Society and so we know what's here.

-How many species of dragonfly in the whole of the UK?

-It's about 50,

if you're counting some of the migrants that are quite rare.

-And how many in the Brecon Beacons?

-About 20.

-That's not bad, is it?

-I've seen 15 here, just in this area.

-Of course,

what we see here now, that's only one small part of the whole life cycle,

-isn't it?

-Yes, now, these have probably been under water for

two years and some of the big ones, like golden-ringed,

even four or five years.

That's amazing, four or five years under water

and then for just a few weeks they're an adult, flying around,

they lay their eggs, pmff, they die and that's it.

This is just the breeding bit but most of the life,

90% of the life is underwater.

This well-worn path has got to be the busiest

one in the whole of the Brecon Beacons National Park,

it's the route up to the top of Pen y Fan -

the highest mountain in the Beacons.

So, I'm going to go and join the masses.

It's a popular walk and not least because it's

so close to the A470, the main route from South to North Wales.

The steep climb is also helped by a defined path,

that's well maintained by the summit's owner, The National Trust.

Summer's a busy time for both visitors and warden Rob Reith

and his team.

-Hello there!

-Hello there, how are you?

-Not bad at all.

I'll have a sit down, if that's all right with you?

-Take a rest.

-I'll tell you what, it's a long way up.

-It is indeed.

-Cor! You've got to do this every day, have you?

-Most days, yes.

-Up and down here.

-Yes.

-And what's this, footpath maintenance?

Yeah, we're doing some erosion control,

so a bit of stone drainage is what we're trying to do.

Trying to get the water off the footpath.

So, this is more about water than people, really, is it?

It's a mixture. First of all, I get the water off the footpath,

by building a stone ditch.

Then, I will bring in some scalpage, which are small stone and dust,

to place on top of the surface for a footpath.

So, what's the worst thing from the point of view of erosion,

is it the thousands of people that come up or is it the water?

It's a mixture of both, I'm afraid.

Once the vegetation's been eroded by the walkers,

the rain water then gets in and starts washing away the soil.

I mean, this last year,

this footpath alone had a footfall of over 200,000.

200,000 people coming up here?!

That's amazing!

What's this process now, you've got these stones here put aside,

are these for putting in a row along the edge?

These will be put in a row along the edge,

I will then be getting stone and putting in a base.

-Right.

-That stops the water getting any deeper.

Then I'll put some stones in the side, which holds the bank in place.

Then I'm making sure that I create gaps, because I then want to put

grass seed in the middle. So, eventually, I want the grass

to actually grow through, hiding the stone pitching.

So, where does the water go?

It then goes down the side ditch and then on to my cross-ditch, off.

Ah, right, then it runs down there.

And I'll do it quite frequently because I want to slow

the speed and quantity of water running down certain sections.

Of all the thousands of visitors that come to the Beacons every year, the

majority are day visitors from South Wales and many come to Pen y Fan.

And this is why!

Top of Pen y Fan, 886 metres above sea level,

highest peak in the Brecon Beacons,

highest peak in the whole of Southern Britain...

and what a view?!

The walk up here is pretty steep, it's pretty hard going

but it's definitely well, well worth it.

It's no wonder that 200,000 people come up the top of Pen y Fan

every year.

The twin sandstone peaks of Pen y Fan and its partner Corn Du,

together with the adjacent ridges and peaks, form the central Beacons.

From here, you can see most of South Wales - a 360 degree panorama.

Translated, Pen y Fan literally is the Beacons' summit.

There are many easier ways of exploring the Beacons than

climbing the high peaks.

This is the Brecon Mountain Railway.

Today, it's a tourist attraction but in the past it was an important

route connecting the industrial south with rural Mid Wales.

It's heading for the foothills of the Pen y Fan range

and passing the Pontsticill Reservoir,

which holds three and a half million gallons of water

for the Merthyr Tydfil area.

Allan Foster is one of the train guards.

I've got to say, Allan, amazing views, aren't they?

It's absolutely stunning, isn't it?

What's the history of this line, then?

Well, the original line used to be a standard gauge line

running from the 1860s right through the 1960s.

-So, it ran for about 100 years.

-Joining where?

Well, it was knows as the Newport to Brecon line, basically

and also the Merthyr line came into this as well.

It ran with passengers as well as freight, iron, steel,

coal and things like that.

So, this would have gone right through the Beacons

-and all the way on to Brecon.

-Exactly.

Yeah, it went right over the top, down to Talybont, then to Brecon

but also up to Hay-on-Wye and up in that direction, as well.

I'll tell you what, that's a hell of a run down, isn't it?

I think it's a one in 37 incline on the other side,

so, it's incredibly steep.

-Hell of a job to come back up.

-Yeah, exactly.

-When did this re-open?

-They actually started running in 1980, with the

steam train, up to Pontsticill, where we just passed and then

only last year we started running right up into the mountains.

It's beautiful once you get up there!

Look at that for a view, look at it!

TRAIN WHISTLES

It's a lovely journey on the train

and most passengers just stop here for a few minutes

and climb back on the train for the return journey but for me it would

simply be a one way ticket to explore the hills and the wildlife.

I'm heading next to an important hill for birds, near Abergavenny.

This is the Blorenge.

In the winter, it's a wild, exposed, barren hill but during spring

and summer the thick plant growth of heather, bracken

and small bushes makes it a fantastic habitat for ground-nesting birds.

By June, many of the birds have finished nesting but

if it's a cold spring and summer some will continue well into the summer.

Steve Smith has been checking the population of breeding birds

here on the Blorenge for as long as I can remember.

Hello there, Steve.

-Iolo, how are you?

-How are you, boy, all right?

-All right, fella.

-Nice to see you.

-Good to see you too.

-What have we got there now?

We've got a small brood of windchats here, about a week old or so.

I'm just about to ring them now.

-Right.

-I've got a feeling there's only four,

and one of those might be worse for wear.

Actually, it might be a dead chick in the nest.

Normally, a brood is...first brood will be about six but it's not been

the best year for the birds.

-It's cold, Steve, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

-Middle of June,

high summer it should be. It's really cold!

I wonder if you could do me a favour?

Once I ring the birds I'll be passing them onto you.

They're a week old but unfortunately

there's not a huge amount of food around, I don't think.

So, I'm just going to put an A-ring on this little chap.

They're doing all right in the Brecon Beacons, are they, on the whole?

Generally speaking, they are.

Thank you, Iolo.

There's peaks and troughs, there's a much larger chick there, you see?

Yeah, yeah, that actually looks like a windchat, that one, doesn't it?

That's beginning to get the black band across the eyes.

-Yeah, indeed.

-Smart, little thing.

He's getting the majority of the food from the parents here.

Pop that in the bag for me.

This is quite a large one too, so this is quite a healthy chick also.

Yeah, let's just hope, I mean, if it warmed up now

and the food increased, even the young one might survive,

-mightn't it?

-Absolutely.

-So, this is the little chap that I'm fearful for.

-That one there?

He's a scrawny, little thing and he was already dead

-in the nest, you see.

-Poor thing.

You know, we don't want this thing to start smelling in the nest. No.

I'll keep him out for the sake of the other birds.

Right, so it's going to be brood of three.

A very small brood, that's only 50%.

The biggest concern

when ringing birds is the time spent near the nest,

especially when it's a tough year for the parents.

During a cold summer, insects are hard to find,

so the quicker we leave the quicker the parents can get on with

the job of looking after the chicks.

Wildlife and landscape are extremely sensitive to people, climate

and anything else that can harm the natural balance of a habitat.

The summit of Pen Trumau in the Black Mountains has been damaged.

It's been like this for 40 years, since a fire burning for three weeks

exposed underlying peat during the hot summer of 1976.

A group of dedicated volunteers is climbing the 700 metre hill

to help patch it up.

They've been doing this every summer for the past five years.

Graham Cowden is one of the volunteers.

Hello there!

I saw you all coming up the hill, I thought

it was some kind of pilgrimage.

About ten people following two horses!

What's going on here then?

We're experimenting in some ways with the use, in this case,

scoured wool but we've also got raw wool here from the local graziers,

in an attempt to slow down the water to try and help this area of exposed

blanket bog and hopefully get it restored.

There should be a thick layer of peat here

but the damaged bog can not retain water

and is continually being eroded by run-off water from rainfall.

Artist Pip Woolf came up with the idea of using locally sourced

wool to help restore the area.

You've got dozens of volunteers, haven't you?

-1,000 people have been involved in this project.

-Honestly, that many?!

Some of them don't come up here.

In the first year we hand-made the felt, which is

a very labour intensive process.

Everyone that came near me made felt

and we laid 300 metres across here and the line is still visible.

It's the thinking -

how can we return this landscape to a working, physical thing?

This is a very powerful landscape and we are part of it.

Pip Woolf and her team may never be able to restore

the summit of Pen Trumau.

After all, it's a blanket bog that's taken thousands of years to form.

The fact is, the Brecon Beacons is a fragile landscape and it

needs the respect of all of us.

Next time, it's the autumn,

the Beacons enters its most colourful season, and both people

and wildlife do what they can before the long, cold days return.