Water Iolo's Jewels of Wales

In this series, I'll be looking at some of the jewels of Wales

and the wildlife associated with them. These are landscape gems -

my choice of some of the very best natural and industrial landscapes of Wales.

I'll be meeting people who live, work and play

in this spectacular scenery.

I'll be finding out why they love it so much.

Beautiful display. You can't really miss a lapwing.

I'll be exploring the sea.

And I'll be visiting industrial sites once exploited,

but now being won over by nature.

I'll be finding out how the Welsh landscape is being used today

and discovering some very surprising wildlife right amongst this dramatic activity.

Wales has terrific landscape

and it's been enjoyed and exploited for centuries.

It's been shaped by nature and by man.

In Wales, it rains a lot.

And water is responsible for much of the beauty of Wales.

We have great rivers,

beautiful lakes,

some stunning gorges.

There are also artificial reservoirs, equally as striking.

Here, water is being exploited as a valuable resource.

And water is the subject of this first episode.

It's my pick of the very best of Welsh Water.

The high rainfall, together with craggy uplands,

means that Wales has some very impressive waterfalls.

This is Melincourt Waterfall, high up in the Neath Valley.

This is Aber Falls in Snowdonia. They're spectacular in full flow.

But my favourite is this one on the edge of Berwyn Mountains in Powys.

It's no wonder, is it, that Pistyll Rhaeadr is one of the seven wonders of Wales?

Just look at it. Absolutely stunning.

But what a lot of people don't know is that, it is, in fact, higher than Niagara Falls.

It's almost 80 metres tall.

And the water has sculpted this shape here.

Basically, you've got hard rock overlying softer rock and over thousands of years,

the soft rock, thanks to the water and the ice and the wind,

has been sculpted away, so that today, it cascades down 240 feet.

When you put it in these wonderful surroundings here, it really is one of Wales' jewels.

This continuous drenching promotes an incredibly rich plant growth...

..some of it very special and rare.

The erosive effect of water also produces deep ravines.

We have many inaccessible gorges, except, of course, for those who enjoy a challenge.

Gorge walking, or canyoning as it's also called,

is the new sport of Welsh rivers.

I was persuaded by local water sports guide Mark Lind

to take part in a gorge walk, in a challenging ravine in Gwynedd.

So how popular is canyoning, or gorge walking, now?

Well, in North Wales, probably over the last three of four years,

the amount of usage here has doubled.

I suppose one of the biggest problems, looking at it from

a naturalist's point of view is that it's such a specialised environment,

full of rare plants, there's the potential there for quite a bit of conflict.

What we have is the code of conduct for gorges in North Wales.

It means that, as a group leader, we need to have some training

and some input from the experts that look after the environment.

We always stay to the same scour zone where the water's flowing over the rock.

It means that we're not damaging it.

We're going across the top of the waterfall here?

Yep. Pretty much scrambling along this ledge.

And, er, at this point, we come to the only way down.

-So we abseil down this next bit?

-We're going to abseil down into the pool.

And this whole path that we've followed all the way down, down here and on again,

-we're avoiding all the really sensitive plants here?

-Yeah.

So it means you can marry having fun, having a laugh,

-but also not desecrating the environment?

-Absolutely.

-Right, abseiling down, then.

-Away we go.

That's good.

Well, very enjoyable, but pretty cold.

The oldest river pastime in Wales is a very different experience -

more leisurely and with a tasty reward at the end.

I'm joining Mark Jones and Ian Harries,

both coracle fishermen on one of Wales' finest rivers, the Teifi.

This beautiful section is at Cilgerran, Carmarthenshire.

It's another jewel of Wales.

-How much net have you got out there now, boys?

-We've got about a fathom,

which will take us down into the deeper part

and we'll drop down about another half a fathom again then.

You must know the bottom of this river like the back of your hand.

You get a bit of a mental picture in your head of what it looks like,

the stones, rock, things in the bottom. And, hopefully, fish.

-And you're fishing for what now, then?

-For sea trout.

-For sea trout?

-For sea trout on the 1st June and then we can fish for salmon...

-Ah, right.

-..till the end of August.

The net's forming a little purse as it goes down the river.

There's a wall of mesh and they swim into a purse.

-Right.

-Then, I just pull the string and close the purse.

Oh, right, that's how it works, is it? You feel the fish coming in.

You feel the fish hitting the first mesh and then you close it then and it hits the back mesh.

Sometimes it gets immeshed or sometimes it's just loose in the bag.

-So there's a potential for it to go in and go back out again.

-Salmon frequently do.

So if you don't feel them quick enough, they're gone.

And there would have been men coracling on this section of river, I'd have thought for hundreds..

-Centuries.

-..if not thousands of years.

Oh, definitely, you know, into the sort of Middle Ages.

And it's thankfully carrying on.

Tell you what, there's only us, and I can hear wood pigeons calling.

It's usually woodpeckers.

What a lovely way to spend a day.

The most colourful bird you'll see on the Teifi and, indeed, on the banks of most Welsh rivers

is the kingfisher.

The first hint that one's about is this high-pitched call.

BIRDSONG

It's a stunning bird.

The Wye is another of Wales' great rivers.

Its nature changes dramatically along its route, from its source in mid-Wales.

All along its course, it's a special site of scientific interest.

It's clearly one of Wales' jewels and an important wildlife habitat.

These are sea lampreys.

During June, they spawn on the riverbed under Boughrood Bridge, near Brecon.

Lampreys are jawless fish and have suckers around the mouth to attach themselves onto bigger fish,

to feed on their flesh.

During spawning, they use their suckers

to attach to stones.

The male shifts big stones on the river, to form a deep depression,

in which the female lays her eggs.

It's one of the great wildlife spectacles of Wales.

By the time the Wye has reached Tintern, some 50 miles south,

it's become a tidal river.

It lies in a deep gorge and flows beneath high limestone cliffs.

The river has carved out a beautiful landscape.

I'm told the best way to experience the Wye Gorge is by kayak.

I'm undertaking the pursuit on a particularly wet day,

with instructor Graham Symonds and Kate Biggs,

who is one of the team that overlooks this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Whenever I come down the Wye, Kate, what amazes me is the sheer number

of yew trees in here. They're everywhere, aren't they?

Yeah. It's because they're, sort of, an indicator species for limestone.

This is fantastic, really, because you've got high limestone cliffs, a sort of ravine woodland,

which you don't get anywhere else in Wales,

probably not in Britain, either. That's why it's also protected.

But it gives it a particular bio-diversity that you don't really get elsewhere.

Amazing place, it really is. And Graham, the best way to see it is like this - from the water.

The best way is from the water,

-but you need to be very careful. The tide today will be 14 metre.

-14?!

13.7 to 14, so that's a 40-44 foot tide,

so if we get it wrong, time and tide waits for no man.

And if we weren't kayaking down, we wouldn't see any of this?

That's right, the perspective off the river is totally different.

-Today, we haven't seen anybody here at all.

-No.

If you go back 200 years, this river would have been a hive of activity,

you would have had barges and troughs coming up from Bristol.

This would have been the, kind of, M4 of its day, because it would have

been the easiest access and you would have carried the biggest loads.

Back there now, Kate, we went past an ancient old church or a chapel? What was that?

That's Lancaut Church. That's a deserted medieval village,

but it was, we know, a leper colony, but the church dates from about the 12th century.

The churchyard in the summer, there's all sorts of herbs and things

in and around the churchyard and, you know, people say

that's because, you know, they were there for the monks to use.

Yeah, I bet they were, too, were they?

Yeah as part of their, sort of, medicinal storehouse.

What a fabulous location to build a medieval village.

At the bottom of the gorge, the villagers would have

had easy access to the main trade route of the period.

Here, not only does the tidal water dictate transport up and down the river,

it also shapes the landscape itself, forming huge sand banks.

Now, if I was asked to choose the best natural lake in Wales,

Tal y Llyn, below the mountain of Cadair Idris in mid-Wales,

would come close to the top. On a bright, still day, it's stunning.

Like most big lakes, you'll be hard pushed to see much wildlife.

What little there is, is usually right in the middle.

But occasionally, an interesting bird comes closer to shore.

These are goosanders.

They're quite a common bird in Wales and are usually seen on rivers.

This one here is a male. The female looks quite different.

They're diving ducks.

They have sawbills that enable them to grasp and catch small fish.

The presence of fish-eating birds always triggers heated debate with anglers,

especially in an important fishing location.

And Tal y Llyn is one of the best fishing lakes in Wales.

Phil Wood is the chief ghillie here- the fishing guide for the lake.

Today, I've a very different kind of fishing in mind.

I only want to see the fish, not catch them.

It helps that Phil likes to feed the fish daily, with bread, close to shore.

-Now, it's not the best of day, visually, today, it's overcast.

-It's perfect for fishing, though.

-It's good for the fish?

-This is the best conditions you can get.

Oh, yeah, yeah, OK, I've got him. Oh, he's moved away again.

Might have spooked them a little bit. They were feeding earlier.

But we have had a few problems with cormorants and poachers.

Do you know what, Phil? I don't know a single fisherman who likes cormorants.

-Oh, we like them.

-Just not too many.

-Just not underwater.

-Yeah!

They're starting to come in. I had one go past the frame now.

Slow. Oh, here we are, here we are, here we are.

-Whoa! Nice big fish?

-I think about three pound, Iol.

Three pounds?

-A small one, for Tal y Llyn.

-Lovely-looking fish.

-Oh, the markings on them, they're unique, you know.

-Beautiful fish.

But it's a very well-known lake, isn't it, for its excellent fishing?

It's a famous lake for the top of the water sport, you know.

It's a shallow lake - six to eight feet average - and the fly life is fantastic here.

And so that's what makes it such a good fishing place? So much food?

So much food and top of the water sport, which a fisherman wants.

-You ask any fisherman, the take is paramount.

-Right.

It takes the fly off the top and you connect.

When fresh water is trapped inland it forms wetland,

and that's my next jewel in the wet Welsh landscape.

Typically, Welsh wetland looks like this one at Cors Caron near Tregaron.

It's one of the biggest raised bogs in Wales.

Occasionally, a wetland spreads to woodland,

and there's a special wet woodland on the outskirts of Swansea.

It lies right in the middle of an industrial area and has somehow

survived both drainage and land development.

In the past, many parts of lowland Wales,

and indeed Britain, would have looked like this -

impenetrable wet woodland.

'Jamie Bevan of the Countryside Council for Wales

'looks after the site.'

I tell you what, Jamie...

it's a dangerous place to come by yourself, isn't it?

-It is. You don't want to come in here on your own.

-No, I'm sure!

I think you're heavier than me.

A couple of stone heavier than you, I think,

the way I'm going down here.

Jamie, don't go too far, hold on!

-It's getting worse.

-It is getting worse!

That's got him!

You'd swear you were in Louisiana

or in the Everglades here,

but it's amazing to think that you're not,

you're actually just on the outskirts of Swansea

and this wet woodland like this

is really quite rare in Wales now.

Feels quite primeval, doesn't it?

It does, yeah.

What is this big, tall sedge here?

Greater tussock sedge. That's the sort of dominant sedge.

And a couple of nice ferns, one of them I do recognise -

that's royal fern. Not at its best yet, cos that's a great big massive one,

and some nice little delicate ones here and there as well. Which one's that?

That's the marsh fern then, and that's the real rarity, actually.

Just a handful of sites in Wales, mainly an East Anglian species,

so only two sites in South Wales for it, in fact.

And that's the odd thing, isn't it?

Because this is a fen, and this is what you'd expect to see somewhere like East Anglia, not in Wales.

Right. Almost like a chunk of East Anglian fenland

dropped on the South Wales coast.

One of the wonderful things about this, too,

is that, yes, it's important for its fen plants,

but I can hear birds all around me.

I can hear blackcap calling,

I can hear chiffchaff calling, just back from Africa.

Blue tits, great tits in here

and of course, there's a lot of dead and dying wood.

Look at this - this is completely rotten here

and the birds love this,

it's good for feeding, it's good for nesting as well.

And some of the trees are just so full of holes.

They're woodpecker holes, but they'll be taken over by blue tits, great tits, marsh tits.

It is an important habitat,

but in a month or two it'll look very different,

that's when the ferns, sedges, will be at their best.

The royal fern will be huge then.

By midsummer, the woodland is pretty much a no-go zone,

you could be in a tropical jungle, not on the outskirts of Swansea.

You'd need a machete to work your way through this.

Water is not only responsible for the beauty of Wales above ground,

it also shapes the Welsh landscape below the land surface.

The Brecon Beacons

and the Black Mountain immediately to the west of the Beacons

have the biggest cave systems in Europe,

and that's because the rock is mostly made of limestone,

which dissolves in water.

One of the most impressive caves in Wales

is Dan yr Ogof in the Upper Swansea Valley.

It's a completely different landscape...

'I'm joining a caving team led by John Osborne,

'who knows the caves well.

'The continuous flow of water has created huge caverns and tunnels,

'which extend ten miles beneath the Black Mountain.'

'As water seeps through the limestone,

'it also dissolves calcium salts in the rock,

'which then reform into calcite formations,

'and after thousands of years,

'they can develop into incredible structures.'

'John is taking me to see

'one of Wales' finest underground spectacles.

'But we have some tough caving to do first.'

'Caves are dangerous places.

'A sudden downpour above ground can flood these tunnels very quickly.'

'You have to know when to retreat and leave.'

'Thankfully, today, this won't happen.

'We'll be able to continue and see an underground jewel,

'which has been formed by water.'

-We're getting there.

-It's a bigger passage, isn't it, this one?

-It is.

All created by water.

-Amazing, isn't it?

-It is incredible.

PANTING

Here we go.

Come on, Iolo, what are you doing? You'd think it was small, this bit!

-HE LAUGHS

-Eugh!

It's physically and mentally demanding, coming through here.

It's because you're in a confined space

and I'm 15 and a half stone

and this, in bits, is like going down a badger set.

Now, can you imagine the first person to come down here?

It was a woman and she didn't know what she was going to get -

whether she was going to be able to get through,

whether she'd have to reverse all the way back,

whether it would become waterlogged or not.

And that starts playing tricks with your mind.

But I am told what's at the far end

really is worth all this effort.

'The first person to squeeze through this long crawl

'was Eileen Davies from Swansea,

'and she did it 50 years ago.'

'She had no way of knowing what was at the end of the tunnel.

'Like any other caver,

'she simply needed to know where it led to.'

Argh! Oh, come on!

'All I'm thinking about

'is that I'll have to come back exactly the same way.'

'But the effort is worthwhile.'

'This has been named the greatest natural wonder in Britain,

'and it's been formed by the action of water on limestone.'

-Wow!

-Oh, wow! look at that.

It's another one of those examples, you know,

where you see something created by nature

and it outdoes anything man can do.

-Totally.

-How old are these?

They're not as old as you think they might be.

Some of the larger formations we've seen,

they are taking up to 100,000 years to form.

These - between, sort of, 100 and thousands of years.

They're actually completely hollow.

There's a drip of water you can see at the bottom, if you can look up inside,

you can get a real sense of it being a straw.

Hence the name "straw stalactites."

-Yeah, cavers love their literal names for things.

-Yeah!

But this is just beautiful,

it's one of the most beautiful things I think I've ever seen,

not just anywhere in Wales, but anywhere in the world.

It's absolutely beautiful.

So was it worth the grovelling and the squeezing and the...

It was... It was, now.

I must admit, at the time I thought, "This had better be worth it."

But the grunting, the groaning, the whining, the getting cold,

the getting wet, all my muscles aching -

this makes it all worthwhile.

It really is beautiful.

While water plays a huge part in defining the Welsh landscape,

it's also an important resource to be exploited.

High rainfall and large upland lakes

makes Wales a perfect location to site a hydro-electric power station.

The oldest in Britain lies below the summit of Snowdon in Cwm Dyli,

it was built in 1905.

It still produces electricity and supplies the National Grid,

and is remotely switched on and off

'when power is needed.

'Jack Reilly is one of the staff who looks after the power station.'

It reminds me of a Welsh chapel, you know, this does.

And I suppose when it was built,

it would have been full of machinery, would it?

Yeah, it would have been four units, same as the one that's there.

And now all of that is compacted into this unit here.

Yeah, this is just as efficient and produces the same power

as those four units once did years ago.

And the water that drives this comes from where, from which lake?

It's coming up from Llyn Llydaw up at the top, just up Snowdon.

So these pipes that come down the mountain, they're feeding this,

and that comes in where?

It comes right down the hill, enters the building,

-gets into the machine though a valve.

-The electricity goes straight to the National Grid?

-Yeah, it's sold to them.

-And I suppose, when it comes on,

there's a fair bit of noise in here?

-Oh, yeah. Ear defenders, definitely.

-Is it?

-Yeah.

-Is it that bad, is it?

I always think we've got that much water in Wales,

we really should be making a lot more of it,

a lot more things like this.

'There are fewer than ten hydro-electric power stations in Wales.

'Considering the amount of water we have,

'you might think there would be more.

'Cwm Dyli has been generating electricity for over 100 years

'and will probably continue to do so for another 100.

'It's one of Wales' little power gems.

'But the real surprise for me

'is the land surrounding the power station.'

One of the things that I really love about Wales is that,

completely unexpectedly,

I've come across an area of rough habitat.

A very rocky area, agriculturally it's rubbish, absolute rubbish.

But it's got these tuffs of gorse, it's got bracken, a few trees

and it's actually got at least three pairs of yellowhammers here.

Now, if you go looking for yellowhammers,

they're very difficult to find, it's quite a scarce bird now.

But we've stumbled across a real little hot spot

and it's lovely to hear a bird calling here,

there's another one calling behind me,

just over there.

And there's another one calling up above, over there.

And these are stunning birds,

they're beautiful, lovely canary-yellow face and chest.

They're lovely, beautiful, beautiful birds.

That's a really nice find,

that's lifted my spirits, that has.

There's no doubt that the biggest use of water as a resource in Wales

is for the supply of drinking water.

Over the years,

reservoir building has caused deep emotion and anger in Wales,

especially those supplying cities across the border,

which have involved the drowning of villages,

and the relocation of local communities.

But whatever your views are

on the rights and wrongs of the sites chosen for them,

these huge masses of water

have had a big impact on the Welsh landscape,

and indeed, some have added to its beauty.

Especially this one at Llyn Vyrnwy in Mid Wales.

Built in 1880 to supply water to Merseyside,

it's the largest reservoir in Wales.

And this is where I grew up.

I left when I was 18 years old

and by the time I'd gone,

I must have walked every square metre of the moorland,

the woodland, the farmland, the edge of the reservoir

in search of birds' nests and frogs and toads and newts and fish...

Anything and everything, really.

And although I appreciated it when I was here,

do you know, it's only now that I come back,

many years later on,

that I realise how privileged I was

to grow up in such a beautiful, such a stunning place.

Because the lake is so vast,

it's very difficult to spot anything on the water.

But if you're lucky, you may see some special birds.

Like this - it's a great crested grebe.

The majority of wildlife at Vyrnwy

is in the surrounding woodland and uplands.

These are goshawk chicks, waiting for their parents to return with food.

They're quite old chicks,

and visits from the parents are less frequent now.

One of the chicks is exercising its wings.

It won't be long before they set off for their first flight.

Llyn Vyrnwy was built during Victorian times

and was constructed as a direct consequence of the Industrial Age.

As Cities grew, water was needed by an increasing population

and to fuel industry.

And industry itself has played a major part in shaping Wales.

In the next programme, I'll be looking at Industrial Wales

and its effect on the Welsh landscape and wildlife.

The large-scale re-shaping of the land,

and the legacy left behind.

Also, the secondary effects of industry...

including canal- and railway-building.

And the great parks created by the industrial wealth.

It's a programme on the nature and beauty of Welsh Industry.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]