Up here, on the roof of Snowdonia, we have restored the blanket bog and protected the largest and deepest area of peat in Wales. Not only is this good for increasingly rare birds such as curlew and hen harrier, but it locks up more carbon than all of the woodlands in Wales combined, and stops it from being released into the atmosphere.
This is also the place where I first thought of this tune, which bizzarely went on to be nominated at the Hollywood Music in Media Awards, two very different worlds. But that’s the power of music I guess……
Llyndy Isaf Farm, near Beddgelert, North Wales
Or at least that is how this particular woodland feels. Nestled on the crags and ledges of a remote North Wales valley but quite close to the sea, a walk, or scramble, through this wood takes you into a different world that works on a different timescale to the rest of us.
Centuries of timber harvesting, grazing by upland sheep and feral goats, and mining for manganese have shaped this wood. Boulders are covered in carpets of mosses, liverworts, lichens and ferns because this is essentially the temperate rainforest, with high humidity and (relative) warmth and grazing by the wild goats has kept the under-story open, which the lichens and mosses love.
This is how we’re trying to keep the wild goats out. If we don’t they’ll eat and strip all of the saplings and young trees, and the woodland will never regenerate. But they still manage to get in…
And the remains of past lives can be seen in the wood. Sheep pens, boundary walls and mine entrances…
