The “Roman Steps” climbing through burnt ground in the Rhinogydd.
The following day I woke early. I could see the fire still burning away but decided to keep well clear of the immediate area. I drove around the northern flank of the Rhinogydd towards Harlech and then cut across to Cwm Bychan on minor roads. The lower atmosphere amongst and to the west of the mountains was thick with blue and/or orange haze and visibility was poor. In normal circumstances my camera would have stayed in its bag but the intention was to document the conditions. I stopped several times to take photographs as I made my way slowly along a gated road (at least seven gates!) into Cwm Bychan. I think they capture the atmosphere quite well.
On reaching the “main” valley road into Cwm Bychan I came across a very definite “Road Closed|” sign. At this point I parked up, had a coffee in the van and put my walking feet on. But did “road closed” also mean no access to pedestrians? It wasn’t clear. Road walking is not my favourite activity but there seemed to be no alternative. After about an hour I reached Llyn Cwm Bychan; I could see that the crags on the other side of the lake had been burnt out, with small patches of vegetation still smouldering. At the farm there was no sign that footpath access to the Roman Steps (and the fire!) was forbidden so I carried on. Fire had fortunately not reached the ancient oak woodland on the lower slopes but as I emerged into open uplands I could see plenty of burnt ground. I carried on upwards along the Roman Steps towards the watershed.
The Roman Steps are definitely not Roman. However the rock laid in medieval times to allow sheep and cattle to be herded eastwards towards markets in east Wales and England did form a partial firebreak. For quite long stretches the flames had not apparently been powerful enough to jump from one side of them to the other.
Signs of the main fire to the east side of the mountains were becoming more obvious so I decided to turn back. I didn’t want to be a victim of the fire or the Emergency Services’ anger! I’d taken a range of images of the burnt ground and have posted the best one at the top of this post. I feel it works on more than level; it shows the results of the fire but also has abstract qualities. I drove home the way I had arrived, via Trawsfynydd; from the main road south it was clear that the entire eastern side of Rhinog Fawr was ablaze. How could this tragedy have happened? What were NRW and the Fire Service actually doing?
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Last week I shrugged off my mid-summer photography slump, dusted off my camera bag and headed off into north Wales. I had heard there was a wildfire in Cwm Bychan in the midst of the Rhinogydd, a range of rugged and wild mountains (and National Nature Reserve) between the Mawddach and Dwyryd estuaries. I thought it might be interesting and useful to document it – if it was still burning. My plan was to drive towards Trawsfynydd , turn off westwards along a minor road into a forestry carpark, and then head further west on foot along the “Roman Steps” a public footpath through the mountains into Cwm Bychan.
Just a few miles north of Dolgellau it became clear that a wildfire was still burning in the Rhinogydd. A blue-ish haze suffused the landscape. It was genuinely unsettling and this feeling was accentuated when a fire engine hurried northwards, blue lights flashing. A gate barred the minor road I planned to take and a sign warned that it was closed ahead. Smoke billowed from the mountains several miles to the west. I reckoned that if the road was “closed ahead” I could legally drive as far as the point where it was actually closed. So I headed along it towards the mountains.
After faffing around for a while, and then trudging and floundering on foot upwards across a wasteland of molinia tussocks, I finally reached a point from where the source of the smoke could be viewed across the treetops. It became clear that the fire which had begun in Cwm Bychan on the western flank of the Rhinogydd more than a week earlier was now burning on the eastern flank, It had, as they say, spread like wildfire.
Looking back inland, Arenig Fawr to the left on the far horizon. In the foreground one of several restored hut circles.
From my viewpoint I could hear vehicles driving along forestry tracks but they couldn’t be seen. I had no real idea what fire-fighting activity – if any – was taking place. Although a breeze was blowing the smoke south-eastwards, the fire itself appeared to be progressing slowly northwards. Very strange!
After taking a series of images, the best of which is reproduced at the top, I returned to my van and a quick mug of tea. I continued up the road in the van but at the point where it enters the forestry plantation I could go no further. It really was closed here. What I had assumed was one fire truck going backwards and forwards must actually have been seven different fire trucks and they were all parked here. Dozens of fire-fighters were in attendance, plus a refreshment tent. They were surprised to see me and rather suspicious of my motives. “Are you the official photographer?” one asked me. It seemed that I had arrived just at the moment when most of the fire crew were being stood down. I heard the chief thanking them all for their hard work and I managed a few quick snaps before they left.
But the fire was still burning. It was more widespread than it had been earlier in the day. The great pall of smoke was still heading for Dolgellau and onward. What had they actually been doing?
Part Two will follow.
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Conflagration on Mynydd Mawr, with the village of Y Fron in the foreground.
Apparently this time of year is widely known as the burning season. This year, in particular, after ten days of continuous sunshine and desiccating southeasterly winds our natural vegetation is now tinder dry.
Last Wednesday morning I set off into north Wales on the last of this winter’s postcard delivery trips. I didn’t have a very full timetable of calls so by lunchtime I was in Porthmadog. I decided to have a leisurely sandwich and birdwatch by the artificial tidal lagoon on the edge of the town. As the water was high few birds were to be seen there but there was a nice selection of waders on Traeth Mawr nearby. Turning back towards the van I noticed a pall of smoke drifting over from the north. I phoned a good friend who lives in Nantlle, about ten miles in that direction as the crow flies. He was very concerned about a fire in the hills nearby that he believed had been set by a farmer the previous evening. It had been burning out of control ever since. I wondered if the smoke I had seen was the product of that fire.
After a final call in Beddgelert I continued northwards. A huge mass of smoke was rising vertically in the still air from the summit of Mynydd Mawr, and then drifting northwards. The mountain looked like an active volcano. But it didn’t really fit the description of the fire I had heard about. Turning westwards at Rhyd Ddu towards Nantlle, the fire was to my right whereas the fire he had described would have been on my left. Entering the village I could see a few wisps of smoke rising from the crags and moorland south of Llyn Nantlle while the main fire was now raging behind me. There were two separate fires.
Mynydd Mawr from Nantlle
My friend – an ecologist by training and with many years of professional experience – was outraged to see the second fire. He had just returned from Argentina where he had had a bout of Covid, and probably wasn’t in the best frame of mind to see both sides of his beloved Nantlle valley being consumed in a conflagration! We walked a short distance to get a better view of it. It was his opinion that both fires had been set by the respective landowners/farmers. Upland vegetation is burnt like this to kill the older, more woody stems of heather, producing more younger shoots, and more grass; in other words better grazing for sheep. But over long periods of time repeated burning and grazing prevents heather from regenerating and results in upland vegetation being restricted to coarse grasses that can resist fire but have little wildlife value. It is one of the reasons why there is now so little heather moorland in Wales.
Mynydd Mawr again……
I was anxious to get more photographs of the fire so headed off in the van towards the village of Y Fron, at a higher altitude than Nantlle. Cresting the brow of a hill the fire in all its destructive reality was visible – see the main photograph above. Four fire engines were present and I had a quick chat with one of the firemen. It was while they were attempting to tackle the original fire to the south of Nantlle that they noticed this second fire take hold. “Whatever can you do about it?” I asked. He spread both arms in front of him, fingers on both hands conspicuously crossed. He said it could have been started by bored teenagers or careless walkers, but I think we both knew who the culprit was. He said that farmers are allowed to perform controlled burns but that they “sometimes got out of hand”. I spent a few more minutes taking photographs before leaving the area.
Near Pant Glas……
I spent the night in the van on the open shoreline of Foryd Bay ; it is one of my favourite places in Wales. But around breakfast time another pall of smoke began rising into the sky to the south. I had enough time to investigate the source of the smoke and fairly quickly located it near the hamlet of Pant Glas. I parked up and walked towards the fire; a figure was visible, moving around near the base of the flames. Through my binoculars I could see him carrying some kind of fire-lighting implement that every so often he would dip into a plastic container of brown liquid. This was a job for my long telephoto lens! I could see he was slowly, methodically and calmly lighting fires in the dry vegetation, without a care in the world. He was completely oblivious to my presence and I took a whole series of photographs. I don’t know how far this fire spread but the BBC Wales News website referred to a wildfire “at Pant Glas” on that day.
Firestarter………
Normally farmers can ignore the guidelines for “controlled” burning because they know no-one will ever see them. The most unprincipled can light destructive fires in the expectation that they WILL rapidly get out of control and be all but impossible to extinguish. But the expenses involved in the Fire Service attending these wildfires, including the cost of helicopter hire, are, unfairly, borne by the public purse. I have sent a batch of photos like the one above to North Wales police, and I believe that the identity of the man lighting this fire would be identifiable from them. How seriously the authorities will take them is another matter, because all too often unscrupulous farmers are given the benefit of the doubt.
Update : A petition asking the Welsh Government to ban so-called “controlled” burning has been started; please click on the link below to sign it.
Extinction Rebellion groups in Ceredigion, Powys and nationwide have held actions and events over the Bank Holiday weekend to revitalise the fight for action on the Climate and Ecological emergencies.
It is hardly surprising that members of public are now less willing to engage with the Climate and Ecological Emergencies than they were six months ago. They have been acutely aware of an imminent danger to their own health and that of their families, and doing whatever was necessary to prevent that happening.
At the same time the focus of government activity and the media has also shifted from the Climate and Ecological Emergencies. But that does not mean that those problems have gone away. Far from it.
Following catastrophic wildfires in Australia late last winter (with massive loss of wildlife), extreme heat and drought in the western United States has resulted in serious wildfires which are ongoing. Heatwaves have again occurred in north-west Europe, while in Siberia, temperatures were an astonishing 10 degrees centigrade above average this June. It has been estimated that as a result, an additional 59,000,000 tonnes of CO2 were emitted to the atmosphere.
You could say that governments around the world are fiddling while the planet burns.
So far in 2020, the months of February, March, April, May and July have all globally been the second-hottest on record.
On measure after measure, the results of climate change are happening sooner and more severely than has been predicted.
Carbon emissions have reduced slightly in the developed world as a result of lockdown measures, but the temptation now is for governments and industry to return to “Business as Usual”.
However the economic recession resulting from the Coronavirus lockdown is an ideal opportunity to rethink the direction that development is taking us.
Air travel, for example, has dramatically declined during lockdown and its return to its previous level should be discouraged. We need to fly less; the planet just cannot afford it. Now is the time to “Build back Better”
The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill (2020) will shortly put before Parliament. This will :
Require the Prime Minister to ensure that the UK achieves specified objectives regarding climate change, ecosystems and biodiversity; to give the Secretary of State a duty to draw up and implement a strategy to achieve those objectives; to establish a Citizens’ Assembly to work with the Secretary of State in drawing up that strategy; to give duties to the Committee on Climate Change regarding the objectives and the strategy; and for connected purposes.
The CEE Bill, written with contributions by respected climate, energy and ecology academics, aims to bring urgent action on the climate and ecological crisis into law.
Green Party M.P. Caroline Lucas said :
The Climate Change Act was ground-breaking when it became law over 10 years ago, but it’s nowhere near ambitious enough for the scale of the crisis we face today.”
Caroline Lucas is the lead sponsor of the CEE Bill. Members of all political parties but one have put their support behind this Private Members Bill, including Ceredigion M.P. Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru). I think we can all guess which party is missing from the list of supporters: unfortunately it does hold power in Parliament at the moment.
Extinction Rebellion Aberystwyth fully supports the introduction into Parliament of the Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. We warmly and sincerely thank Ben Lake M.P. for his commitment to a greener future.
If you think your M.P. might be amenable to persuasion to support the CEE Bill, please contact him/her.
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