Condry – Tales from Wild Wales

In 2024 I was asked to introduce the main speaker, David Elias, at the Condry Memorial Lecture in Machynlleth in October. This event takes place every year to commemorate the life and work of William Condry, pioneering Welsh conservationist, author and warden of the nearby Ynyshir RSPB reserve. My role was to talk a little about Bill and my connection with him and read some of his work, before introducing the main speaker. This is what I came up with.

“Although I can’t claim to have known Bill well, I first met him in 1980 when he was warden of Ynyshir RSPB reserve. I had read his New Naturalist guide to the Snowdonia National Park, and was anxious to meet him, so I offered to do some voluntary work on the reserve. On my first visit he took me to listen to the reed warblers which had recently arrived on the Dyfi, and then left me to work with a billhook on some conifers. Within minutes I had sliced my thumb open and had to find my own way to hospital. I still have the scar to show for it!

Despite that inauspicious beginning I met Bill occasionally at Ynyshir and elsewhere. Although there was a huge gap in age, experience and knowledge between us, we seemed to speak the same language. If he disliked the human species on masse he had a rare ability to communicate on a personal level with humour, intelligence and respect.

During his life I was sadly not able to collaborate with Bill professionally as a photographer. But it was through his contacts at Gomer Press that my first book was published in 1996. “I strongly advise you to approach them with your ideas”, he told me. After his death in 1998 I selected a number of his Guardian “Country Diaries” and paired each one with a photograph, all published in another book for Gomer Press, “Heart of the Country”, which in many ways was a tribute to him. So I owe a debt to him personally, but far more than that we all owe a debt to him for his descriptions of Wales and its wildlife and the beauty of his writing. He was able to convey quite complex ideas in a deceptively simple style.

The reading I have chosen from The Guardian is perhaps not typical of his “Country Diaries” but it demonstrates Bill’s powers of observation and patience. It could almost have been written by a photographer!

“The other day following a tip-off from a friend I went to a north Wales mountain in the hope of seeing that rarest of our mammals, a pine marten. I chose a high perch among the rocks, across the valley from a spot where my friend claimed to have seen the animal. I settled down to a day-long watch from dawn onwards.

At first the mountain before me was a simple black shape against the sky. Then the sun rose behind me, lighting up the hillside’s many folds. I began to see clefts, scars, crags and all these I searched carefully through with my telescope. As the sun moved slowly round, probing the mountain from new angles, I could see new hollows and new buttresses being revealed by the play of light with shadow. But no marten.

By afternoon, though I was still the same side of the mountain, it seemed a totally different place from the one I looked at in the morning. For now the lowering sun had discovered an entirely new series of ridges and hollows. It is now – of course- that I should reveal triumphantly how, just as I was giving up, I saw my pine marten coming through the evening shadows. But no, I saw nothing.

So was this day thrown away? I think not. At least I learned that there is more to a simple mountain shape than at first meets the eye.”

We are constantly reminded of losses to our wildlife. Bill would have seen the corncrake, woodlark and red-backed shrike, among others, become extinct in Wales. The red squirrel was driven to extinction in most of Wales during Bill’s lifetime by the spread of the non-native greys. In our own times turtle dove and corn bunting can be added to the list of missing species, while we are close to losing others like the curlew, yellowhammer, willow tit, and whinchat.

But the picture is more complex than a continuous series of losses. I have already mentioned the reed warbler, which was first seen on the Dyfi in 1980. In 1962 Bill wrote of the “splendid and rare red kite”, and how he treasured the kite’s feather that he had found in a Welsh oak wood. Although splendid still the red kite is now so abundant that most of us barely notice them as we go about our daily lives.

In “Wildlife, My Life” Bill describes the excitement caused by a vagrant little egret that spent two months on the Dyfi estuary in 1970. Little egrets first bred in Wales in 1996 but are now present in astonishing numbers on some parts of the Welsh coastline. I guarantee that he never saw a great white egret in Wales yet a flock of sixteen was recently seen on the Dyfi estuary. He could never have imagined that there would now be about fifteen pairs of ospreys in Wales. Or that they would be nesting every year within sight of Ynyshir.

We don’t know what Bill would have thought of re-introducing lost species into Wales because during his lifetime this wasn’t the done thing. In the “Country Diary” that I read earlier Bill was searching for a pine marten, which was then exceptionally rare in Wales or possibly extinct. But it has now been successfully re-introduced and is now widespread. And after many years of hesitation the Welsh government has finally just approved (in theory) the re-introduction of beavers into Welsh rivers. Would Bill have welcomed the re-introduction of white-tailed eagles into Wales? We don’t know. Yet this seems to be close to becoming a reality in the not too distant future.

It is impossible to discuss wildlife in Wales without talking about agriculture. In “The Natural History of Wales”, published in 1981, Bill wrote the following-

Bird numbers rise and fall naturally and it is often hard to decide whether a particular fluctuation is due to changes in farming practices or not.”

But in a “Country Diary” published three years later he wrote –

“Some of us fail to see the point of increasing upland sheep production because on such poor land it can never be successful without vast subsidies”

There is now abundant evidence that the intensification of agriculture has been responsible for the loss of wildlife in most parts of the country and this continues to be the case. One can walk through Welsh farmland for long periods of time with barely sight nor sound of wildlife. Green deserts indeed! Nevertheless the farming unions continue to deny that their members may have been responsible for these losses, and continue to protest loudly if any changes are proposed that might benefit wildlife on farmland.

So what future for Welsh wildlife? There can be no doubt that financial support for agriculture needs to be radically re-designed, so that wildlife can begin to return to farmland in Wales. And the power of the farming lobby needs to tamed.”

I then handed over to David Elias, who spoke about his experiences on an exceptional farm in north Wales which unusually has retained much of its wildlife interest into the present day.

These are clearly less personal memories of Bill than the ones I posted recently about Penny. There are several reasons for this. For one thing my piece was aimed at a particular audience. Secondly, my memories of Bill are now quite hazy, as he died over twenty-five years ago. I do remember, though, how much I respected him for his work, his writing, his lifestyle, his knowledge and his generous attitude to a mere pretender like me. And I also remember becoming very emotional at his memorial service and had to leave before it finished.

Between them Bill and Penny were quite a ‘power couple’ in their own way. How lucky they were to have found each other!

NB: There is more about Bill in my introduction to my book ‘Heart of the Country‘ ; still available, secondhand –https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9781843232032/Heart-Country-Photographic-Diary-Wales-1843232030/plp)

and new –

https://www.ylolfa.com/products/9781843232766/heart-of-the-country-(hb))

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_{Bill and Penny in the 1950’s (photographer unknown)}

Friday’s memorial service for Penny Condry was a sombre occasion. It took place in the beautifully restored chapel – Y Tabernacl – part of the Museum of Modern Art in Machynlleth. To my surprise, it took the form of a Quaker meeting, where attenders sat in silence. Over a period of an hour, individuals rose to read short prepared pieces about Penny, or spoke spontaneously of their memories or feelings about her – many being close to tears, including myself. The silence between each contribution allowed everyone present to process the memories that the speakers had evoked, even if they themselves did not speak.

Penny was 102 years old when she died last month. I had known her since the 1980’s when I first visited her husband Bill, who was the warden of the RSPB’s reserve at Ynyshir, between Machynlleth and Aberystwyth. He was also a writer of some renown, about whom I will say more later. I’m not going to pretend that I was close to the Condrys at that time. My memories of Penny on those first visits are limited to her being someone who brought forth pots of tea and home-made cakes. She had devoted her life to supporting him in his career as teacher, author and pioneer in the field of conservation. She had been there while the environmental issues in Wales of the day were being discussed by Bill and his friends, wildlife enthusiasts all. I was then able to sit in the same rather gracious sitting room where these discussions had taken place. In their personal lives, Bill and Penny had put their green ideals into practice long before it became commonplace to do so. But Penny was not a woman who enjoyed the limelight.

That did change somewhat after Bill died in 1998. He had written a “Country Diary” for the Guardian every fortnight for over forty years. I came up with the idea of selecting some of these pieces and combining each one with one of my own photographs, and my publisher (Bill’s also) liked the idea. This could never have gone ahead without Penny’s approval and she gave it without hesitation. This proved to be the beginning of a closer relationship, which probably deepened when I wrote in my introduction to the book that I had been more affected by Bill’s life and death than my own father’s. I sometimes wondered if she saw me as the son that she had never had. She missed Bill deeply and would often talk about him on my visits, sometimes as if he was still there. She recalled the nitty gritty of the world of conservation in Wales which Bill never talked about in his books. How I wish I had been able to record those conversations for posterity, because all those insights will now be lost forever. Bill himself wrote that “the story of my unadventurous life would not be of the slightest interest to anybody…” How wrong he was.

Penny was not one to bother herself with trivia. She loved her garden, was very knowledgeable about natural history, and genuinely interested in other people. Her opening gambit was often “How are you ???” and it felt like she really wanted and needed to know. Another was “Are you happy???” or “Is Jane happy???” referring to my partner in later years. At the memorial others spoke of her becoming a Quaker and her dedication to the Merched y Wawr (Women’s Institute) in her local village of Eglwysfach. As her health slowly deteriorated she became increasingly anxious. She wondered how long she would be able to survive on her own in a rambling and isolated house at the end of a half mile long track. But she had some very good friends who kept an eye on her and did the heavy lifting in the garden. Arthur Chater, for many years the botanical recorder for Ceredigion, and lifelong friend of the Condrys, took her shopping on market day in Machynlleth every week. I sometimes met them there.

Inevitably the time came when she became too frail to live on her own. She moved into a nursing home near Aberystwyth, but it didn’t suit her. It was never likely to suit someone so much of whose life was spent outdoors. I visited her there a few times and she told me she hoped death would soon come and take her away. But there was one final surprise in store. During the decades I had known them neither Bill nor Penny had let me take their photograph. They were both camera-shy but particularly Penny. (I can identify with them in that respect……) On the wall of her room was a framed portrait of both of them taken many years ago. I showed an interest in it and out of the blue Penny just gave it to me! This was very thoughtful but, on reflection, I thought she might regret it. So I re-photographed it, processed it and returned it. It’s the photograph at the top of this post. I shall treasure it for the rest of my life.

There’s just one more thing. In Penny’s time the role of most women was to support their husbands, and she did this very effectively, allowing Bill to fully reach his potential. But I can’t help wondering what Penny might have become had she been born, say, fifty years later, by which time women were encouraged and expected to have lives and careers of their own. She certainly had the potential to go far.

I will talk about more about Bill in Part two..

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Tag: Condry

Remembering Bill and Penny Condry (Part two)

Remembering Bill and Penny Condry (Part one)