Wild Land News no 69, Summer 2007

Wild Wales - As not protected by Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri Article

With National Park status seemingly unable to give assured protection to our Scottish landscapes, David Jarman goes south and crosses two borders to see how things are done in Wales.

The western prow of Cadair Idris will lose its classic dignity if invading conifers take hold in the meadows below.
Photo:David Jarman

Some miles inland of Dolgellau, up tortuous lanes to Llanfachreth, over an endlessly rocky hill which fails to attain even Corbett height, and across an interminable bog, there rises eventually a spine presenting a craggy rampart to trackless wastes, upon which quixotic goal I once set my sights for a late-teen birthday outing, the point of which my father singularly failed to see. Rhobell Fawr (2408') and Dduallt (2171') come to mind now as my epitome of 'wild Wales', remote and untamed. They were two of the last outposts to fall, during a short decade in which my school club and my father and latterly my thumb had taken me to nearly all the Welsh hills, allowing me to sign them off with a traverse of the magnificent Harlech dome and move on to greater things in Caledonia.

We never doubted that they were 'wild', with many of our visits being in cloud and wet, and with gales or snowdrifts rendering even the humble Black Mts inaccessible.

And we never questioned that these hills would always remain virtually unchanged for our enjoyment. Most of them had long been protected within the Snowdonia and Brecon Beacons National Parks - indeed all those above 2500' except inexplicably our favourite Berwyns. With rare exceptions such as the plonking of Trawsfynydd nuclear power station in the humdrum wastes south of Ffestiniog, we came and went untroubled by any threats to their sanctity - though we did regard Snowdon itself as a bit of a joke, what with the vast café (which we pronounced cafe) on top.

For all the years that Scotland didn't have National Parks, and suffered endless attritions large and small, my comparator for good management of precious landscapes was the Lake District. Here I could return to haunts of youth with every confidence that they would be no further desecrated - no more reservoirs, no more forests, no road improvements after the horrors of the A66 and the absurdity of Dunmail Raise. For me the acme of appropriate care in the public domain is the road from Penrith to Ambleside, jinking timelessly along Ullswater and over Kirkstone Pass; the benchmark of upland changelessness is the enduring utility of Wainwright's Guides.

So when the chance finally came along to revisit Wales this Easter after 35 years absence, it never occurred to me to expect anything less. The only major insult I knew of within Snowdonia during that time was the sacrifice of the hallowed approach to my first Welsh 'munro', shapely Elidir Fawr and the Marchlyns, to the Dinorwic pumped storage scheme. Of course, wind farms have been proliferating on the mid-Wales moors to the extent that on a clear-day flight down to Bristol they dominate the view for half the length of the country, but they are outside the mountain cores.

Starting at Aberystwyth and working north to Bethesda, via Machynlleth and Dolgellau and Porthmadog, the manifest failure of the Park to protect this magnificent scenic heritage at every other step distressed me to the point of composing a letter to its Chief Officer as I walked - not a happy return. Of course one doesn't waste one's time actually penning and mailing such green-ink missives, as the system is designed to ignore general diatribes from visitors (they can barely respond to specific complaints). But since the Editor has chapped my door again, here is an Open Letter to the National Park Authority, endorsements and amplifications welcome.

Incessant afforestation

There is a place for large forests in North Wales, just as in Scotland, and longstanding ones such as Gwydyr on the lower ground around Betws-y-coed are considerable public assets comparable to the Trossachs. But at too many turns I was affronted by new afforestation with harsh edges pushing up much too high - such as a fat finger reaching up over 630m behind Braich-du, the western bastion of the great Cadair Idris range. Even more offensive is the filling of valley heads and cwms right to their rims, spiking over bold skylines - as in the grand 670m plateau between Cross Foxes and Dinas Mawddwy, deeply bitten into by cwm-scoops with sharp rims and crests. Worst of all is where forests are planted right up to the boundary fence making a mockery of several long ridge walks on both sides of Corris. These are crass transgressions of basic design principles, perpetuated by the Forestry Commission both on its own land and via grants to private investors, unchecked by an ineffective or politically hamstrung National Park Authority, and inadequately resisted by all the amenity bodies.

These may be lesser hills, but the effects are conspicuous from their greater neighbours, and they would if untarnished be becoming popular with less ambitious walkers; in the Lake District, Catbells and Loughrigg are as cherished as the Pikes. Even in prime mountain country, opposite Snowdon itself, the shapely Corbett of Moel Hebog and the lovely Nantlle ridge have long been infested with forestry pressing too far up their cwms and swamping several old paths across the watershed that links them - no signs of retreat since my 1959 1" map. There may be no vast new forests in the high mountain core, but it is saddening to see a new tongue of zig-zag-roaded forest hemming in the Aber Falls on the NW flank of the Carneddau, where I was once encouraged to help wear out one of the best scree runs in the country; especially since it rises to 500m hard against the National Trust estate boundary, and blots out the trough-side below the falls, the floor of which is an NNR.

Then there is unplanned afforestation. The NE end of Cadair Idris is a sweep of ancient upland, which breaks off abruptly in the great 300m crags of Graig Gau. Beneath them, a tract of sheepwalk has been taken out of grazing, presumably in pursuit of conservation in a National Nature Reserve. It is now speckled with seedling conifers - two intervening ridges away from the nearest plantation.

Looking from Moelwyn Mawr across to Cnicht with Snowdon and the Glyders behind - bike tracks proliferate across the slopes on the right and reach the north summit of Cnicht Photo:David Jarman

Rhododendron

Swathes of Snowdonia have disappeared under the rhodie, wherever some Victorian built a country retreat, and thus most notably around the lovely sheltered low-lying traeths between Porthmadog and Harlech. Half a century and more of National Park, and no sign of abatement - abandon hope, all ye that love Loch Lomond and its oak-wooded neighbours. I only came upon one control operation, in an out-of-the way fringe of the Park by Llanymawddwy, where the blasted hillside stood out against traditional slopes of grass and bracken and nibbled heather - within which a thousand more seedling rhodies lurked.

Here I was a bit stunned to read a letter in the Guardian from the president of The Rhododendron Society asserting that the rhodie was a native of Iberia, had once been native in Britain, and should be welcomed back along with global warming. Am I being too species-ist here ? Remembering a recent foray down Loch Goil to Carrick Castle, I think not.

Power lines

There have long been transmission lines around the fringes of Snowdonia, what with nuclear at Wylfa, pumped storage at Ffestiniog, hydro at Dolgarrog. As in the Highlands. But it still came as a shock to see how brutally they impact on the Carneddau, crossing their north end well within the Park over 400m up, dominating views of them and out from them. My new map shows three lines in close parallel for much of this stretch, and indeed the special place where the bare mountains come down to the sea looks more like the environs of Merseyside or Kincardine Bridge.

This leaves me in little doubt as to the enormity of the impact of the Beauly-Denny proposal, where it crosses open uplands. We have to wean ourselves eventually from dependence on a supergrid, and from treating our most scenic landscapes as if they were industrial zones when it comes to power sources.

Back at the very heart of Snowdon, in its stupendous east cwm, I had forgotten that Llyn Llydaw was dammed for hydro. The pipeline down the mountainside is singularly visible to this day, and would never be permitted now - so has no-one in the Park ever thought to grow native woodland around it in all these years ? There's a wee challenge for the Nevis Partnership...

Bulldozed tracks

One of my goals was 586m Graig Goch, a mere moorland, but a grandstand for the south side of Cadair, and the rim of the biggest ancient landslide in Britain, which dams Llyn Tal-y-llyn. My old 1" shows no tracks on it; my new 2½" shows a track from the Corris col up to the half-way shelf, not too offensive, quite handy even; my visit finds it freshly extended right up along the ridge and almost to the top. From which can be seen a network of new tracks all over the open hillsides on the SW flank of Cadair itself.

And a few days later, crossing from Bala over the highest road pass in Wales to descend for the first time into the magical trough-head of the Dyfi, its innermost sylvan stretch before it curves up west to its source beneath the great escarpment of the Arans, I find the magic wasted by half-a-dozen new bulldozed scars zigzagging nakedly up the steep, open walls. Who funds these things ? They are not for forestry, nor for sport; if simply to make shepherding more efficient, is this really a priority any more, or is it some entrenched bureaucracy keeping itself in its accustomed business ? Does the National Park have no powers or policies to prevent them, or (as we suspect in the Cairngorms) is the voice of the landowner still predominant ?

Bike tracks

This was not the misty moisty Wales that I remembered - bone dry after weeks of drought, some days of thick haze (obscuring the windfarms lurking around the southern fringes of the Park), some of exceptional clarity. On the very best day, unbroken sunshine from Dolgellau dawn to Criccieth dusk, I returned to Cwm Croesor, where once on a school bus trip to invisible hills I had peeked into the phone box to find the Welsh for 'ambulance' was 'ambiwlans'. Today my researches required a circuit of the valley, ascending Moelwyn Mawr from the old quarry to confirm my hunch that a great rockslide has sharpened its crest, and then circling round over Cnicht to photo the ensemble in westering sun. Perfect, except for having to give my unfamiliar digicamera battery heat therapy to tease the killer picture out of it.

Imperfect, because all the pleasant grassy rakes between the crag-bands above the valley-head were combed with scramble-bike tracks, which found their devious ways onto the broad north ridge. Now Cnicht (2265') is affectionately tagged the 'Matterhorn of Wales'. We had once scrambled up it in wind and rain; this evening it was to savour. I settled down just by the north top, most of the 14 Snowdon munros silhouetted, Cardigan Bay curling out to Lleyn, the Harlechs and wilder Wales spreading inland. And was joined by two bikers doing their ascents and jumps over the outcrops.

This was not just an isolated instance, it is evidently an abuse which has been running for a long time, and is most likely local lads who know the slate quarry roads up from Blaenau. Unlike my other regrets, it is not a land use or development issue but an access management one. It is what National Park ranger services are for. I am not trying to ban scramble biking, but there is abundant scope for it in this quarried moonscape without committing such sacrilege. I would be surprised to find it happening unchecked on favourite Lake District crests, or along Stanage Edge or Mam Tor in the Peak.

Wales -v- Scotland -v- England

I come away from Wales with an impression - possibly ill-founded - that almost 60 years of National Park have protected Snowdonia no better than 60 years without National Parks have ravaged the Highlands. Will we say the same about our new National Park areas? If my hunch is right that the Lakes and Peak have been much better safeguarded, what does this suggest? Maybe the cultures of North Wales and the Highlands are rather similar, with a bitter resistance to controls imposed from distant cities, and a more deeply-seated attitude to the exploitation of the land for traditional employment and economic gain. Maybe having a high proportion of the Lakes and Peak in National Trust and other 'public' ownerships has fostered a more protective and managerial attitude there. Maybe the Peak is run primarily for the benefit of the adjacent city populations, and the Lakes are run primarily for tourism.

My revisit to Wales found the essential magnificence of its peaks undiminished, and some changes for the better - last time we had to sneak up the Nantlle ridge, hasten along it, and get off before the infamous farmer could give us a blasting, this time it is all Access Land and enjoyed by scores. But its sense of wildness is everywhere lessened by the same attrition and neglect as my Beauly-Denny evidence charts for the Highlands [see website].

Glancing at my new map to check the environs of Rhobell Fawr, I see any attempt to repeat our wildest walk out to the remote rampart of Dduallt would be impossible, for the interminable intervening bogs are now productively afforested from end to end, much to my father's relief no doubt.

Editor's note: Are we expecting too much of our National Parks or do these impressions chime with our readers' experiences? We should be particularly interested to hear from those who regularly visit Snowdonia and the other National Parks mentioned here.

Reply letter from Aneurin Phillips, Chief Executive, Snowdonia National Park Authority