Carneddau and Skomer Weatherman Walking

You might think that these remote Welsh hills are off limits for

disabled people,

but think again.

Oi, wait for me!

My walks this week have the "Oooh" factor - water, wildlife

and wicked views - what more could you want?

This week I'll be island-walking

and bird-watching on Pembrokeshire's stunning Skomer Island, but first,

I'm heading north to the Carneddau Mountains to see what's

involved in getting away from it all when you're a wheelchair user.

Here in North Wales we're surrounded by loads of wild

and challenging walks but for some people their biggest challenge

is something most of us take for granted - walking.

My guide is Terry Taylor and for over 30 years

he worked as a British Mountain Guide,

climbing in amazing locations all over the world.

But in 2009, a massive stroke changed his life forever.

Hi, Terry, great to meet you.

Hello, Derek, nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you.

-All good, I hope.

-Mostly.

-Mostly.

-Yeah.

Well, it's great to be here at the foot of the Carneddau Mountains,

-looks a bit wild and rough up there.

-It is, yes.

-Forgive me for asking,

but how are you going to manage it?

With some difficulty, I expect, but I do have a secret weapon

-I'm going to rely on. Come this way and I'll show you.

-OK.

Without Celia I wouldn't be able to do anything.

-Derek, this is my wife, Celia.

-Hi, nice to meet you, Celia.

-Hello, Derek.

-This gets me everywhere I want to be...to get

or everywhere I can get.

-And it's sturdy. I've dropped it over a cliff once.

-Really?

-Yes.

It's very important for us disabled people to have something like this,

cos it enables us to get up in the mountains on long

and challenging tracks, we wouldn't otherwise be able to access.

-You couldn't be without it?

-I couldn't, no.

Along with Celia, he also couldn't be

without his amazing support network and today he's joined

by friend and fellow mountain guide, Malcolm.

-So you're one of Terry's right-hand men?

-Yeah, I just come along

to pick up the bits in case he turns it over,

which has not been unknown. He's a bit adventurous at times.

So, shall we get going?

-Yeah, yeah.

-Let's do that.

OK, let's head for the hills, eh?

Going for a ramble in the Welsh hills needs preparation,

but for Terry it's vital that he has the right tools, support

and supplies to help him get where he wants to go.

And today Terry's taking me

along an ancient track, crossing the Carneddau Mountains in Snowdonia.

Starting high above the village of Abergwyngregyn,

on the north coast of Gwynedd,

our ramble follows part of the old Roman Road from Caernarfon to

Chester, with spectacular views across the Menai Strait.

Stopping to hunt for a Roman board game, we finish at Bwlch y Ddeufaen

"Pass of the Two Stones",

before retracing our tracks all the way back to the car park.

It's a round trip of just under five and a half miles.

So, have you been on this track many times before, Terry?

Oh, yes, cos it's slightly harder, the step up from the dead easy ones,

which can get a bit boring if you do them too much.

-You like a bit of a challenge?

-I do, yes.

Like many disabled people, Terry's disability came later in life

and totally out of the blue.

So, Terry, can you tell me what happened?

It was on New Year's Day, 2009, I had a stroke...

..and I hadn't even been celebrating.

I never smoked, I only drank to excess on very rare occasions

and I was as fit as I could be for my age, 66.

So did you know what was happening to you?

Did you know it was a stroke?

I suspected it was but I didn't want to admit it, even to myself.

So the stroke changed your whole life because you were so fit

and active, always out on the mountains.

Yes, instantaneously, but not just for me,

for my wife Celia as well.

I really thought I was going to make a miracle recovery in record time

but of course it didn't happen.

You must've thought you'd never be able to get out and about

into the mountains again.

First of all, I really didn't care whether I lived or died.

You know, cos it was so traumatic for me.

I didn't care for some weeks...

..about that.

But through the support of his family and friends,

Terry eventually found the strength to carry on,

and soon he was back up in the mountains.

# When life kicks you down when you least expect it

# When life kicks you out when you've got no home

# Sometimes to test, to test if you're strong

# So, follow your heart. #

-The weather's improving.

-Yes.

-Some blue sky.

-Thank you, Derek.

-I arranged it just for us.

-Yes, I know, I knew you had contacts.

How far does this track go?

To Chester, eventually.

It linked a line of Roman forts,

Roman way stations from Chester to Segontium.

Segontium was a major Roman fort on the outskirts of Caernarfon,

built to control the local tribes

and keep hold of the harvest from Anglesey's breadbasket.

But unlike the marching Romans, I prefer to go at more leisurely pace.

# We're on a road to nowhere

# Come on inside. #

Oh, there's a little ford, look. I love going through fords.

-You're not going to splash my feet, are you?

-No.

People have lived and farmed up here since prehistory

and it's still a popular route today.

Over there, you can see Puffin Island, which a few years ago

was infested by rats, and the RSPB and the Nature Conservancy cleared

it of rats, and now puffins are nesting there again.

-You do get some great views from up here.

-You sure do.

You do indeed, yeah.

With those views over the Irish Sea and Anglesey,

I can see why getting up here is worth the effort.

Have you ever suffered from a flat battery?

No, no, slow punctures, yeah.

And since discovering what his all-terrain mobility scooter can do,

he's now passionate about encouraging

other disabled people to give one a go and get off the beaten track.

I belong to an organisation called Disabled Ramblers Association

and most of the people on that use them, and Disabled Ramblers

have about seven or eight ones, which can be loaned for rambles.

They're expensive,

so Terry helps people try before they buy, organising safe

and accessible rambles in this corner of North Wales.

So how do they react when they first come up here?

Well, most of them are absolutely amazed at how beautiful it is

and the scenery, what they can see, animals and birds

and wild horses up here.

They love it and then they want to go again and again and again!

For more information about joining a disabled ramblers group,

visit our website...

Being up here gives you time to think and appreciate life, doesn't it?

Oh, yeah, yeah, it does.

What do you think of this, then, Derek? Look at all these ponies!

-Beautiful, aren't they?

-They are.

These Carneddau mountain ponies have been isolated up

here for hundreds of years, making them completely wild

and genetically unique from other British ponies.

Henry VIII wanted them destroyed

because they were too small to carry a knight in full armour!

But today, thanks to the hill farmers working to protect them,

they are thriving.

It can get pretty rough up here,

so imagine what it was like for the Romans

building this road nearly 2,000 years ago.

Did you ever wonder, Derek,

what Roman soldiers did in their time off?

-No.

-They used to play games, like board games on rock.

I saw it once but I can't remember where it was.

I know it was down there.

OK, we'll go and have a look, shall we?

-Just tell us if we're getting close or not.

-You're getting warmer.

HE LAUGHS

-That's it?

-No.

-No, OK.

Talk about looking for a needle in a haystack, Terry's got us

looking for a stone...on a mountain!

You don't need to hold hands.

Am I getting closer, Terry?

-I think you're closer than I am. Hey, look at this.

-We found it, Terry.

Terry, we found it!

So what was this game, then?

Well, this is a game called Nine Men's Morris.

There are two players involved and they have nine pieces each

and they had to line up three of their men to make a mill,

and once you got a mill that was a score.

And with each mill, an opponent's man was taken,

until a player was down to just two men, game over.

And the Romans would have played it sat here, rested and enjoyed

the wonderful views.

-Right, let's get away.

-I bet Terry's missing us.

Yes, I'm sure he is, yes.

-Well, we found it, Terry.

-Well done.

It's amazing to think it survived that long!

Off we go!

MUSIC: Born to be Wild by Steppenwolf

Looks a bit tricky here, Terry.

Well, it's a bit more interesting, if that's what you mean?

You get a bit of a buzz?

Then I put my legs over the top there, like that.

It seems Terry's whole life has been spent pushing limits

and living on the edge.

Room for a little one, Derek.

-Good grief, that's not you, is it?

-It is, yes.

And this is on Llanberis Pass, a crag which gets ice on every year

and I was always the first to climb it. The ice here is only about half

-an inch thick.

-Yeah, it looks like you're just in midair.

-Did you have any accidents at all?

-Yes, I had a major accident in 1965.

My feet slipped off a hold and I ended up falling for 350ft.

So I was travelling pretty fast when I hit the ground.

-You're lucky to be alive!

-I am lucky to be alive. I broke a lot of bones,

both legs, my jaw, cracked pelvis, cracked vertebrae.

Yes, it was very serious.

Blimey! It didn't put you off?

Oh, yes, I didn't want to know about climbing for some time after that,

but when I realised I was going to survive, I thought I might as well

give it a go.

-Get back out there again.

-Cos I still had the boots.

And I went back to climbing again just over a year later.

-Well, that's a real testament that after...

-To my stupidity?

..after going through all that and surviving, that you went back on to

the mountains and... What sort of reaction do you get now from people

that you're out and about on the hills again?

A normal reaction is people say, "You shouldn't be doing that," or

"You won't be able to do that,"

but that's even more of a spur to me to do it, to do those things.

Good on you.

MUSIC: Ain't No Mountain High Enough by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell

Spending time on this ramble with Terry has been truly inspiring.

He's overcome so much and shown me what a lot of willpower

and a bit of WHEEL-power can do.

And from here, it's downhill all the way back to the car park!

# Ain't no valley low enough

# Ain't no river wide enough

# To keep me from getting to you! #

And if you fancy trying this or another of our walks,

go to our website...

It's got detailed route information

and walking maps for you to print off,

or you download it onto your tablet and take it with you.

# Living on an island

# Looking at another life

# Waiting for my friend to come. #

This is a place I've always wanted to come to, Skomer Island.

It's got hundreds and thousands of seabirds and I'm meeting

the wildlife warden who's going to show me why this place is so special!

To get to Skomer you have to catch a boat from Martin's Haven.

The trip takes about 15 minutes and only runs between the beginning

of April and the end of September, when the weather's good.

You can't book in advance, so make sure you turn up early.

Skomer Island lies just a mile off the south coast of Pembrokeshire.

The walk starts where the boat drops you off,

before you head inland to the old farmhouse.

Then it's a short walk north to the Garland Stone to

look at the seals, before following the clifftop path to Skomer Head.

Next is the island's best

wildlife spectacle, The Wick,

with its enormous seabird colony

and thousands of puffins.

Finally, it's on to the remains

of an Iron Age settlement,

before catching the boat to the mainland.

All in all, a gentle walk

of just under three and a half miles.

My guide is Birgitta Bueche, the wildlife warden for Skomer.

Bee is originally from Germany

and has lived on the island for three years with her husband, Ed.

Her job is to monitor and protect the birds

and to look after visitors.

-Hi, Bee.

-Hello, Derek.

-Lovely to meet you.

-Yeah, lovely to meet you too.

So, tell me, what's it like living on Skomer?

Absolutely stunning, amazing place to be.

A real privilege to be here with the amazing amount of seabirds

and the scenic views, so, yeah, really good.

Now, I don't know much about bird-watching

-but you're going to give me a few tips.

-Absolutely!

I'll show you some birds and we've got these binoculars for you,

-so you'll need those.

-Thank you. Shall we go?

-Yeah, absolutely!

You don't have to walk far before you get your first close up

wildlife experience.

Well, it's incredible, Bee, we're surrounded by puffins.

Yeah, North Haven is a really good place for them,

so you've got some sitting down there on the rocky outcrops.

Yeah, we've got about 4,500 puffins breeding in this bay

and all in all, about 21,000 on Skomer.

So we're really lucky they're doing really well here.

They're really cute, aren't they, with their orange-coloured beaks.

Yeah, they're absolutely amazing. That's why people love them,

-they're just like little clowns.

-Are they quite friendly?

-To be honest,

they're quite feisty birds and the researchers, if they catch them to

put rings and geo-locaters on the birds, they often come back with

bloody hands. They've got really sharp claws and really sharp beaks.

-They've got to be careful.

-They know how to defend themselves

but they do look extremely cute.

It's lovely to see them.

Yeah, it's great, it's a real privilege again.

Skomer has lots of well-mapped paths to follow

but you have to stick to them.

The island is honeycombed with burrows,

with thousands of rabbits, puffins

and other seabirds living underground.

Stray off the paths and you could hurt yourself and the wildlife.

-So what are these buildings here?

-So this is a farm, what we call

the Old Farm and nowadays it's a hostel where people can stay

overnight, staff accommodation and volunteer accommodation.

But it used to be a proper running farm. Until the 1940s, there were

livestock here, they were growing potatoes, but actually the farming

goes back many, many years.

5,000 years ago there was already farming here,

with a population of around 200 people living

here in the Bronze Age.

And we've got amazing Bronze Age and Iron Age remains on the island,

one of the best in Britain, apparently.

These days, how many visitors do you get here?

On a good day we get up to 300 day-trippers and, all in all,

throughout the year, we get about 15,000 people coming

on day trips and we've got about 2,000-2,5000 people

and staying in our hostel.

If you want to go and see similar seabirds species and a similar

number of seabirds, you have to go, like, up to Shetland

and it's a long boat trip.

I get seasick, I've done it.

It's not very pleasant, but down here, ten minutes by boat and

just off the coast of Pembrokeshire, so it's really accessible.

Probably one of the most accessible seabird colonies on the planet,

I would say.

So where are you from, Bee? Because that's not a Welsh accent.

No, it's not, no, I'm German. I grew up in the southern part of Germany,

-so quite far away from the sea, actually.

-So what brought you here?

My husband, Ed. Well, in those days we weren't married, but I came to

Britain, first to Norfolk,

and worked for Norfolk Wildlife Trust up in

Norfolk and then we decided we would like to live and work together,

so we applied for the Skomer job and got it and that was three years ago.

So we've been here ever since.

Not sure if I could live on an island but there are some amazing views.

So where are we now?

We're just coming to the Garland Stones, so that's a nice place

to sit down and we can have a look out to sea and see whether we can

spot some porpoise or maybe some seals.

Is that Ramsey Island over there?

Yeah, that's Ramsey, it's our neighbours.

Have a look down there and there's a group of seals.

-There's quite a few of them.

-Yeah!

The big one, the massive big one lying on its side, that's a male and

then the little ones are youngsters, and the medium-sized ones,

especially the spotty ones, those are the females.

We get them also in North Haven, they're often quite a lot in

North Haven and they do funny things like go and lie and in our boat.

We've got a little inflatable boat, Zodiac, and we had a big massive

bull seal lying in there a few years back, so it's good fun to watch them

in North Haven as well.

-Well, the weather's changed again.

-It has, yes.

-I bet you've seen some

-rough weather during your stay here.

-Yeah, absolutely, in autumn time

we get gale force 9s and stuff, so the chimneys rattle and

the roof rattles and there are days where you can hardly go outdoors

just because it's quite dangerous - you could be blown off a cliff.

So, yeah, and that's also one of the reasons why

we leave the island at the beginning of December, because it gets

really rough and we come back in March when the weather's better.

MUSIC: Weather With You by Crowded House

This is Skomer Head now and amazing scenery, very spectacular

scenery, I think, on Skomer.

On a nice summer day it actually looks like the Mediterranean.

Well, it doesn't feel very tropical today with this wind and drizzle.

No, not very nice today but we'll go and see the seabirds -

they don't mind a bit of wind and rain.

Luckily the wind and rain started to ease off, just as we reached

Skomer's most amazing wildlife spectacle, a kind of seabird city.

-Well, this is spectacular! What's it called?

-This is the Wick, so this

is our biggest sea cliff. It's a quarter of a mile long and it's

got lots and lots of seabirds on it.

So you've got the fulmars, which are little albatross,

you've got the kittiwakes, which are amazing little gulls.

They're the ones which you can hear in the distance.

They say their own name, they go, "Kittiwake, kittiwake!"

And then you've got the guillemots on there, 4,500 guillemots, and lots

of razorbills as well.

So they are just as amazing seabirds as puffins

and people should try and make an effort to see them as well.

That's amazing how close we can actually get to the puffins -

they come right up, don't they?

Of course, it's got our most accessible puffin colony on Skomer

and people love it here

because puffins are right next to the footpath.

Does that cause a problem with the visitors getting so close?

Yeah, a little bit. Sometimes we get 250-300 people on a day and they

line up here and they all want to take pictures, and puffins

can't get to their chicks any more to feed them

and you can see it's really, really fragile.

If a burrow collapses you'll end up squashing a bird, injuring a bird.

So, yeah, we try to get people to enjoy the rest of the island

just as much as the Wick, but it is a site that everybody loves

to come and visit.

It's great to watch them and how they exhibit all different behaviours.

You can see them billing, so the partners will be team-bonding,

they'll be billing and they've got this funny head-jerking and opening

of the beak when they're a bit annoyed with a neighbour, say.

They show a bit of aggression sometimes as well.

-A real spectacle.

-Absolutely, yeah.

I could have watched the puffins for hours,

but there are other things to watch on Skomer.

So this is one of the roundhouses we were talking about earlier.

In the Bronze Age and Iron Age there were people living on Skomer.

They had cattle and livestock on here and this is one of it.

They would have these roundhouses. The wall would have been the bottom

part of the house and on top would have been

a wooden structure with reed.

Yeah, it's really interesting, lots of archaeology going on Skomer.

Most people go to Skomer for the day, but if you book

in advance, you can stay overnight in the hostel on the island.

The reason is another extraordinary seabird called the Manx shearwater.

Unfortunately, you have to stay up really late to see them.

Bee, it's nearly midnight, I should be tucked up in bed having 40 winks.

What are we doing?

Well, we have to go out at night if we want to see the Manx shearwaters

coming back to the colonies, so that's what we'll do.

We'll go and see some. We can hear some already.

So why do they only come out at night?

So they're really, really clumsy on land.

Basically, can't properly walk, they have difficulties lifting off

and if they came in during the daytime then the gulls would

eat them, especially great black backed gulls - they know they're

defenceless and they go for them.

So the only way of being able to feed their chicks safely is to

come in when all the gulls are asleep.

-I think I can hear a few. Shall we go and see them?

-Yeah, go on, let's go.

First of all there was some other wildlife to get past.

So we've got to be really careful. It's a rainy night and there are

toads and frogs everywhere.

Just make sure you don't step on any.

There's one, for example.

-That's a toad, is it?

-That's a toad, yeah.

We get massive big frogs here. They're very amusing when they hop.

-I'd hate to step on one.

-No, it wouldn't be nice, would it?

-Oh, there he goes.

-There's one.

Frog.

There you've got your first Manx shearwater.

They just look really alien on land. I guess they feel alien on land

because they hardly spend any time on land, only when they're breeding,

otherwise they're out at sea all the time.

They've got lovely little beaks and they've got tube noses, so elongated

noses like the albatrosses have - same family like the albatrosses.

You can see how a gull can pick that up.

I mean, if you sit around like that...

SHE LAUGHS

-You're completely defenceless!

-Yeah, completely defenceless.

They'll just sit tight until we've left

and then he'll find his burrow to feed his chick.

The Manx shearwaters make a really odd sound.

CHUCKLING WHEEZY CALL

It's quite eerie as they fly around in the dark.

And Skomer has the most Manx shearwaters in the world?

Yeah, so it's 316,070 pairs,

which is the largest colony on the planet.

We have 50% of the world's population,

so lots and lots of birds.

They are very important, so if Skomer got rats on it or if there

was a big oil spill around Skomer this species could even go extinct.

Yeah, so really important.

The Manx shearwaters fly to Skomer across the South Atlantic,

some from as far away as the Falklands.

They can fly over five million miles in their lifetimes.

Watching the Manx shearwaters was one of the most unforgettable

wildlife experiences I've ever had.

Isn't it fantastic that an amazing island like Skomer lies just

a mile off the Welsh Coast?