While shepherds watched their flocks

Too many sheep, with consequent overgrazing, has damaged the rich mix of plantlife at Hafod y Llan, the farm that rises from the Nant Gwynant valley floor to the summit of Snowdon. Believe it or not, sheep are picky eaters, with a bit of a sweet tooth for particular plants, leaving others to thrive and dominate the mountain sward.

Bilberry and heather regenerating on the foothills of Snowdon

Since the National Trust acquired the farm 15 years ago the number of sheep has been halved but the plantlife has not recovered everywhere or as well as hoped. The problem is that sheep, like nature, abhor a vacuum and sheep from neighbouring farms have been trespassing. Worse still, they like to graze on the more sensitive areas on the higher slopes of the mountains.

To sort this out a shepherd was employed in 2014 to push the sheep into the correct areas and to evict the trespassers. But when he knocked off, the sheep ‘came out to play’. So this year a second shepherd has been appointed and between the two of them they can provide 7 day cover during daylight hours in the summer. Hopefully the mountain tops will soon be a purple haze of blooming heather and fruiting bilberry with sheep growing fat on the pasture below.

If you’d like to know more about this project, embracing traditional shepherding to tackle a current issue, this film might be of interest (Welsh version first and English version below):

Snowdon: The Story of a Welsh Mountain

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Everyone of course knows it’s in Wales or do they? As the first book about the mountain in ninety years, I think the author wanted to emphasise its roots in the local landscape, history, folklore and community as opposed to viewing it in isolation. Having taken a swipe at the ‘colonialists’, the record has now been set straight.

There’s nothing glossy about the book which boasts not a single illustration, not even a map. Going against the adage of pictures painting thousands of words Jim Perrin says you can convey so much more in writing; mixes of description, history, hopes, fears and so on. The writer can direct the reader more specifically, creating a mental picture, forcing thought and contemplation as opposed to a quick flick through.

That sounded plausible but I also liked what the publisher (Dylan Williams of Gomer) said at the book launch. Not only was Jim’s manuscript seven years late it was more than double the target wordcount. In parallel with the words, photos by Ray Wood had been commissioned and delivered but, with 65,000 words that were too good to be cut, there simply wasn’t the room for them.

It’s a very learned book, with many of those words being quotations from older texts or footnotes, and a ‘select bibliography’ stretching to seven pages, but it’s also very personal. Even the man who drove his Vauxhall Frontera to the summit (twice) gets a mention. This is followed by an admission of the author’s ‘hoodlum’ motorbike rides to reach the best climbing cliffs in time for an after work climb .... ‘It ill becomes old men like me, whose pasts will scarcely bear the weight of scrutiny, to grow sanctimonious’.