Uplands Iolo's Jewels of Wales

'My name is Iolo Williams, and in this series,

'I'm looking at some of the jewels of Wales.'

Oh, wow, look at that.

This is new for me,

so I'm seeing the birds from the water rather than the land.

Incredible. Absolutely amazing place.

'It's my pick of Wales' landscape gems

'and the wildlife associated with them.

'In this programme, I'm exploring the hills and mountains.

'It's my choice of jewels from upland Wales.

'I'm meeting people who share my love of these stunning landscapes.

'I'm finding out how the uplands were used in the past,

'and how they're used today.

'And seeing the wildlife that lives in this challenging

'and dramatic landscape.'

This is the Clwydian range.

And this range of hills is often overlooked, unfairly so.

You see Moel Famau, that's the highest peak in the distance

and Offa's Dyke path running right along it here.

And it's a succession of hill forts all along.

This one is Moel Arthur, built 2,000 years ago during the Iron Age.

And you can see why they built these forts up here

because they were easy to defend,

and the views really are magnificent.

The high peaks of Snowdonia in the distance,

the Carneddau, the Gladerau and even Snowdon itself.

And coming around towards the north, this is Pencloddiau here,

and on there was the biggest hill fort of them all.

Not much left there now, of course, but plenty of wildlife.

Buzzards and ravens and kestrels. It's a great place to come.

It's early April on the Clwydian Hills high above Ruthin,

and a pair of kestrels are pairing up ready for the breeding season.

So too are a pair of buzzards.

The Welsh uplands have been a big attraction for people

since prehistory.

Around 600-hill forts were built in Wales during the Iron Age.

This one at Bryn Caer overlooks the Conwy Valley.

It's perfectly placed for a panoramic view of the lowland.

The most impressive hill fort remains in Wales are at Tre'r Ceiri

near Trefor on the Lleyn Peninsula.

The people living in this hill fort over 2,000 years ago

were seeking security.

It gave them a good vantage point to protect themselves

and their animal stock.

We can only imagine how they lived here in ancient times,

but we can certainly today share their experience of being

in this fabulous location.

The uplands are my favourite landscape in Wales.

Especially the high uplands.

It takes great effort to explore them,

but once you've reached the hilltops, the views are magnificent.

Take Bwlch y Groes, right in the heart of Wales above Dinas Mawddwy.

It's part of the Cambrian Mountain range,

which forms the spine of mid-Wales.

In common with the rest of our uplands,

the ancient woodlands that would have stood here in the past

were cut over 4,000 years ago to form open pasture and moorland.

You'll be hard pushed to find a more dramatic setting in Wales.

Here's another upland jewel...

Nant Ffrancon in Snowdonia, also known as the Ogwen Valley

and situated below the mountain of Tryfan

and the Glyderau mountain range.

The landscape is a stunning mixture of open space, waterfalls and crags.

Upland wildlife here is difficult to see,

but when you do find it, it's often rare.

In Nant Ffrancon, the rarity is a twite...

an insignificant-looking small bird,

but a bird that you'll rarely see anywhere else in Wales.

And they're here largely because of the efforts

of farmer Gwyn Thomas.

During the spring and summer,

Gwyn puts seed down for them daily to help supplement their feeding.

Twite, it's never been common in Wales,

but it's fairly widespread in north Wales and there were

maybe six or seven locations where you could find them breeding.

They're now, as far as we know, down to this one area here

and all of these birds come and feed on Gwyn's farm.

Twite have a great Welsh name that describes them perfectly.

It's llinos y mynydd, the mountain linnet, and they do look a lot

like linnets, but they're linnets that breed in the high mountains.

But they've gone into decline in the uplands

because of changes in farming methods.

One of the things that's happened is that in the olden days

every farmer around here would have had hay meadows full of seed.

All the farms would have had hay meadows.

And that's all gone because of silage because of weather...

No, the system of farming has changed.

These upland farms now have gone away from cattle

because of the expense and cost of keeping them.

They are farming sheep and sheep only. So this is why the twite

have flourished here, as the system I'm using here is a very old system.

And these birds here will be the birds that nest up on the high tops.

Just in the heather above us, wherever the nests are.

They're so tiny I don't think anyone have come across the nests so far.

A change of land use has had a big effect on this little bird,

but thanks to Gwyn it's found a haven...

a last refuge, if you like, in one of Wales's most dramatic landscapes.

This is Cwm Twrch,

a fabulous valley below the Black Mountain in south west Wales

and in the Brecon Beacons National Park.

It's another of my upland jewels of Wales.

Cwm Twrch has an industrial past.

Buildings associated with an old colliery still remain.

And they're great additions to one of the best upland walks in Wales.

Higher up the valley you eventually reach an impressive gorge,

and it's a popular site for nesting ravens during early spring.

Local bird watcher, Colin Richards,

has been recording birds here for many years.

Oh, there we are, Iolo. On the ledge just there.

-Oh.

-The droppings.

-By the top there.

-That's it.

-Oh, it's a nice nest.

Oh, there we are, you can see them now. There's at least three.

Two, three... Yeah, it's three, is it? I can see three beaks.

-At least three.

-Do you think it's four in there or just the three?

Yeah, you can see them gaping.

-Yeah, it's three, isn't it? Three heads now.

-Three.

It's a typical raven nest, a big pile of sticks,

with baler twine and wool in there.

Probably three weeks old.

-Yeah.

-They'll stay in there until they're about five weeks.

Yeah, yeah. They're quite big lumps. God, they're ugly, aren't they?

I've got to be honest, I do like ravens but raven chicks

are not the most attractive of birds.

How long's this nest been here then, Col.

-Oh, at least 20, 25 years.

-Has it?

-At least that.

-They're opening their beaks now to cool down.

Pretty warm nest, Col, cos it's lined with wool, isn't it?

-Full of wool.

-It's a lovely nest. I do like ravens and the adult birds

-will probably be away getting food for them.

-Yeah.

What I like about them, they are early nesters.

These would have been on eggs, what, late Feb?

Late February, this pair.

And we are over 1,000 foot up here so pretty exposed, pretty cold,

pretty harsh here, but they time it

so these chicks are in the nest at a time when they most need food

which is when everybody's lambing up on the hills.

A lot of dead lambs, a lot of afterbirth, the odd dead ewe

-so plenty of food for the ravens.

-Yeah.

They're like Welsh vultures, aren't they?

They are, aren't they?!

One of the main uses for the uplands in Wales

is for conifer tree planting.

The trees are generally grown on land that's too poor for pasture,

and about 10% of the uplands are covered with conifer plantations.

These dark woodlands are often frowned upon by naturalists

and thought of as barren, empty places with little value for nature,

but this is far from the truth.

They have a very rich wildlife.

Increasingly they've become substitute habitats

for a whole range of species that use to live in broadleaf woodland.

And that fact alone makes them important jewels

in the Welsh landscape.

A jay is perfectly at home in a conifer forest.

There's plenty of food and nesting sites for it.

Conifer plantations are last refuges for red squirrels in Wales.

It's only in this habitat that they can reasonably compete

for food with the grey squirrel.

Spruce cone seeds are a particular favourite.

They can't compete at all in deciduous woodland.

All this wildlife would not be here in Wales

were it not for commercial tree planting.

Derek Roberts is a timber contractor.

He's using an extraordinary machine in a forest

lying on the slopes of the Preseli hills in Pembrokeshire.

What will this wood go for now? What will it be used for?

-You've got some thin rails here now.

-Yeah, now, if it's bent

that will go for pulp.

What it does is it goes down to Swansea

and goes on a boat and goes to Finland,

but all the other stuff, the log and fencing, will all go

to local little mills around.

So the best wood goes local?

Yes, yes, they send that away.

It's just a rough length, is it? You try and get them

all around the same length?

-No, they've got to be perfect.

-Oh, they have to be perfect.

-Yes.

The mill, if it's too short, you know, they can't do anything with it

so they're very strict on the lengths.

And it automatically shortens or lengthens?

It finds it all itself. Yeah, it's fully automatic.

Incredible. You just feel like you are working your way through

this forestry here in charge of some huge, great big prehistoric beast.

It's like working a T-rex down here!

Does it make cups of tea and cakes, as well?

I've got an oven here.

-Have you?!

-Yeah, I've got an oven there.

-Have you honestly?

That was a joke! I didn't know you've got an oven!

Where's the fridge with the cold beers?!

Yeah, the fridge sits in there, but I haven't got my fridge.

Derek works with his cab comforts

in the hill forests of Pembrokeshire.

Local bird recorders have shown that these forests

have become important nesting sites

for a whole range of deciduous woodland birds such as redstarts.

These plantations on the uplands have become

very important wildlife sites.

But if I were asked to choose a favourite upland forest,

it would have to be Coed y Brenin in north Wales

because of its size and the range of wildlife that lives in it.

You'll find nesting buzzards during the spring.

They're magnificent birds of prey.

Coed y Brenin also has one of the biggest

fallow deer populations in Wales.

And you'll find a remarkable ant,

which has really taken to this man-made habitat.

Oh, Wow! This is a huge wood ants' nest.

Northern hairy wood ants to be exact.

It's got to be five metres in circumference,

about a metre tall, and you can see the ants carpeting the top here.

They reckon there's about 100,000 ants in one nest like this,

and if you run your hand over them they'll defend the nest.

If you smell it then...

HE SNIFFS

Oh, formic acid. They'll spray it. That's their defence.

And they've got a series of tunnels in here winding its way down,

and the nest is really carefully positioned as well

because it's quite open this side, so they do get some morning sun.

That'll heat it up, but it's also got quite a bit of shelter over it.

If you get heavy rain then it's not too badly affected.

And at the moment, it's cooled down a bit and the ants

are not as active as they often are

and they're just getting some warmth off this nest here.

It's quite a warm nest. Here they on my fingers now, too.

Fantastic. The whole nest is alive with ants.

The forest floor is full of ant hills with tracks

leading from them on which the ants travel to gather their food.

They bring back all sorts of material

including beetles much bigger than themselves.

In any "best of" list of upland Wales,

the Rhinogydd mountains in north west Wales

would have to be included.

Cwm Bychan is roughly four miles inland from Harlech.

It's a hot spot for wild goats,

but what makes it special for me

is the variety of small upland bird species that you'll find here.

There's a male ring ouzel singing away on a rock up there.

It's kind of a... Well, it is really a mountain blackbird.

Its terrain is out in the uplands, rocky uplands, like this.

And the Rhinogydd are just about the best place

in the whole of Wales for them.

They're not easy to pin down, they're not easy to find,

but I've obviously been sat on the edge of a territory here

because he's singing away like...

Oh!

It's a beautiful song! Everyone says "Oh, the blackbird

"has got a lovely song" and it has,

but I just think the ring ouzel's song is...

It reminds me always of the wilder, rockier parts of Wales.

So when you hear that,

you know that you're out in the wilderness by yourself.

It's a lovely, lovely song.

During the spring the Rhinogydd slopes above Harlech are full

with the sounds of birds.

If you venture too close to a stonechat nest,

you'll soon here this alarm call...

TWEETING

It's a female.

The male is much darker,

and they'll both warn you away from their territory.

A similar looking bird to a female stonechat is the whinchat.

Unlike the stonechat, a whinchat is a summer visitor from Africa.

This is a bird I was really hoping to see up here.

It's not a common bird any more.

When I used to wander these hills, 25 years ago,

you'd find whinchats. Practically every valley had them.

And he'll use some of these low perches, he'll go on gorse,

he'll go on some of the rocks and lower branches.

They also go quite high up in the ash as well.

And when they're up there singing away,

they're striking birds, they really are, but nowhere near as confiding

as some of the other birds up here in that they have this...

kind of a comfort zone, you know.

You rarely get within 40 metres of a whinchat.

Once you get that close... Pumf! Off it goes.

The Rhinogydd mountains and, indeed, the whole Ardudwy uplands

in North West Wales are also special

because they're full of relics of the past.

And this is the most extraordinary of all.

A monument built on Bryn Cader Faner

during the Bronze Age, and it's a real jewel in the uplands.

Frances Lynch is an expert on pre-historic Wales.

Wow, this I have to say, is one of the most

remarkable ancient structures I think I've ever seen in Wales.

It looks like a crown of thorns, doesn't it?

Yes, it's a sort of sunrise monument and its splendidly dramatic.

But what was this thing. Francis?

Well, this is a cairn, a round cairn,

which is the traditional burial monument of the Bronze Age,

round about 2000 or so BC.

But why here? I mean, we're over a 1,000-foot up, its very barren,

very harsh. Why would they have built it here?

Because they were living around here at that time.

I mean, it is a period of climate change

and you've got warmer weather here, you've got a longer growing season

and you do see a lot of Bronze Age activity in the uplands.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to come here 2,000 years ago and see

exactly what it would have looked like then.

And see who they were burying here and so on.

We tend to think they were heathens, but they were intelligent people.

They may have been heathens, but they were intelligent!

They must have been, Francis, they were Welsh.

Of course they were, yes!

Well, actually, they make some quite good ones in Cornwall

and in Derbyshire as well.

-But they would have been Welsh.

-Indeed.

Yes, the Kingdom Of Elmet.

Yes, that's right.

You see, we once ruled the world, Francis.

We once ruled the world... and it's gone downhill since then.

Yes!

The Welsh uplands are truly magical.

They're places where you can really lose yourself in the past.

And they can even transport you to distant lands.

Whenever I come here and look out,

I always think of the African Plains.

The Serengeti with its wildebeest and its giraffes.

But, of course, these are not acacia trees.

They're hawthorns with a few rowan thrown in as well.

This is the edge of Ireland Moor in Radnorshire in mid-Wales.

And this habitat is ffridd. It's a mixture of a bit of bracken,

a bit of gorse, bit of heather, scattered trees.

It's undervalued, I think, because probably of the fact

there's so much bracken here.

And yet, in spring and summer, it's alive with the songs

of really quite scarce birds now.

The loudest song comes from a skylark

which sings high up above the moor.

It makes upland walking a real pleasure,

but you'll only experience this in a few special upland locations

like this gem on Ireland Moor near Painscastle in mid-Wales.

A similar looking bird that you'll find here,

but smaller and duller, is a meadow pipit.

It's an unremarkable looking bird, and yet even ordinary common birds

are fascinating to watch, especially when they're looking for food.

This one's strategy is to listen...

watch...

and a quick dash when an insect appears at the surface.

There are plenty of insects for the meadow pipit on the Welsh uplands,

and that helps make it our commonest upland bird.

These are the Eppynt Mountains in mid-Wales.

They're situated immediately west of Builth Wells.

It's a vast area of empty, rolling hills dotted

with conifer plantations here and there.

Much of this upland has restricted access, and for good reason.

It's the most important army infantry training area in Britain.

GUNFIRE

The enemy position is that barn in the distance over there

and you see some of the guys... More of them moving up now.

Got all kinds of stuff here, light machine guns,

heavy machine guns, they've got rocket launchers.

Incredible.

'The Eppynt upland is perfect for this type of exercise

'with its undulating contours, hidden gullies

'and sporadic woodland cover.

'Colour Sergeant Stuart Benson is one of the soldiers

'who's overseeing the exercise.'

So this is absolutely vital training for these boys

before they go overseas for combat.

Oh, massively, especially in the job they'll do.

-These are training to be section commanders, aren't they?

-Yeah.

So they need to know how to do all this and the procedures.

Are you watching them

and are you thinking "Oh, well, I wouldn't have done that,

"I'd have done it this way"?

Or are you watching and thinking "He's good, he's good"?

-Both.

-Is it?

-Both, yeah.

At the end of every incident we go for a debrief,

talk about the use of ground, the rates of fire.

-So it's basically assessing everything.

-Everything.

-The whole exercise...

-Yeah.

-..from individual to team work.

From individual skills and drills all he way through.

And there's me, all this banging's going on and shooting

and everyone's organising this

and I'm thinking "There's a skylark singing over there"!

What makes the Eppynt special is, in fact, the army's presence.

Because the land has restricted use for both agriculture

and general access, it's perfect for wildlife.

With hardly any sheep grazing allowed on the land, rough grassland

and areas of bracken and gorse are allowed to grow

which act as nesting and feeding sites,

and cover for all sorts of birds and animals.

Away from the noise of the action,

you can really tune in to the songs and calls of the birds.

Most of the Eppynt here is grass moorland, but tucked away,

down in the valleys, is some really interesting little bits

and these will hark back to the time when this was all farmland here.

Lovely woodland, mainly birch and a few hazel in there.

And they're obviously really old. They're covered in moss

and they're full of little holes as well and from a birds point of view,

that's what makes them really interesting, and you stop here

and you look and you listen. You can hear blue tits,

you can hear willow warblers

and every now and again, you get a heavy machine gun going away.

And that really is quite disconcerting, I have to say.

The most striking bird here is the redstart,

but they can be very elusive.

It's difficult to get a really nice clear view of this male redstart

because he's just so busy in this wood.

He's not long back from Africa so he's torn between two things.

He wants to come up onto the tops here and sing,

because he hasn't got a mate yet, but also he wants to keep his

territory clear and he's willing to chase away anything and everything,

whether it's a willow warbler, robin, blue tit, great tit,

doesn't matter what it is.

So the moment he comes up, high up on one of these obvious perches,

I get my binoculars up and he's off chasing another bird away

and he's into the dense undergrowth there...

and a difficult bird to watch.

Really difficult bird to watch.

Redstarts are mainly found in the north and west of Britain

with the greatest concentration in Wales,

and they seem to love these upland areas of mid-Wales.

Tell you one bird I wasn't expecting to see out here is a crossbill.

There's a stunning male right up on the top here.

Beautiful red plumage. He really does stand out,

but there's others calling. There's one calling from up here

and I suspect it's probably a family group.

And they have this unique beak.

One mandible goes that way, one goes that way

and it's designed to get at pine cones.

They're early nesters. Even though it's only April now,

still quite cold even though the sun's out,

these will have been on eggs in January if it's a good cone year.

They'll have the chicks out of the nest by the end of Feb

so they'll be together for a while.

These have stopped here for two reasons.

First of all there are quite a few cones here,

but the other thing, earlier on, they were down...

There's a little bit of water here,

and because their diet is seeds, that's incredibly dry

and they have to come down every now and again and drink water.

So they'll come down, drink from here but, at the moment,

they're back up on these tops and he's back feeding on some seeds.

And he really does stand out. Bright red against all that green.

Cracking looking bird.

More than anything, it's the unexpected sighting

that makes wildlife watching so rewarding.

Especially on the big open spaces of the Welsh uplands.

All the landscapes of Wales have their little gems.

Sometimes, you have to work hard to see them.

Sometimes, a gentle stroll is all that it takes.

But whatever the effort,

you can be sure that you'll find plenty of jewels in Wales.

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