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00:04The rivers of Wales are among its greatest natural treasures, shaping
00:10breathtaking landscapes for centuries. In this series I'm going to be traveling
00:17along four of Wales's longest river valleys.
00:22The Ask, the Towie, the Tivey and the Dee. Heading from tidal shores to mountain streams.
00:36I'll get to see the fascinating wildlife living there.
00:42All four are rich in stories and surrounded by epic scenery. So join me through the seasons
00:50as I uncover the wonders of four great river valleys.
01:06Flowing through the heart of Cymarthenshire, the river Towie runs for 75 miles and it's the valley I'm exploring on
01:14this journey.
01:15I'm starting at Llan Stefan where the river meets Cymarthen Bay and I'll travel through the fertile lowlands,
01:22finishing in the Towie forest near its source in the Cambrian mountains.
01:31I'm starting my journey up the Towie valley here on Llan Stefan beach with the village of Ferriside over on
01:39the far shore.
01:41And behind me you can just about make out the top of Llan Stefan castle. It was built by the
01:48Normans in the early 1100s.
01:51And over the next 300 years it saw some severely bloody battles.
01:57And that's because if you commanded the high ground, if you had control of that castle,
02:03you not only were lord and master of the land around you,
02:07but also won the biggest thoroughfares into the heart of this part of West Wales.
02:12The river Towie itself.
02:26It's come to a lovely bit of dune here right by the edge of Llan Stefan.
02:31See that a lot of sand has been dumped.
02:33And once you get this marram grass, this old tussocky grass,
02:37once that settles, that'll stabilize the dune and allows scrub and trees to start growing here.
02:44It's a perfect place for birds like a stone chat.
02:47There's a lovely male stone chat perched up here.
02:51Stunning individual, really dark, really black head, white collar,
02:55and a beautiful orange chest as well.
02:59And he's chack-chacking away.
03:01He's telling me all fears.
03:03He's saying, listen, this is my territory.
03:05I'm nesting here. You just keep away.
03:07Oh, he's just gone off.
03:08Oh, he's just caught an insect.
03:10Just flew up, caught an insect,
03:12and he's just gone straight back down again to feed on it.
03:15Oh, that's lovely.
03:17Well, I'll follow his advice.
03:19I'll keep away.
03:20Just let him get back to his nest.
03:29In line with most UK rivers,
03:32the Towie also suffers from water quality issues,
03:35mainly pollution that strips oxygen from the water,
03:39which can devastate the river ecosystem.
03:43I've stopped here just about a mile downriver from Carmarthen.
03:47The river's tidal all the way for another couple of miles yet.
03:51And the first time I walked this river,
03:53this section of river was about getting on for 50 odd years ago now.
03:57And I remember looking out from some of the bridges,
04:00looking down and seeing some fish,
04:02some big salmon making their way upriver to spawn, you know.
04:06But I wish I could tell you it was still like that.
04:08I wish I could tell you still really good number of fish in here,
04:11that the river's clean.
04:13Unfortunately, it's not.
04:14And to see all you're going to do is look at the far shore.
04:17That should be mud, brown mud, but it's not.
04:19It's green. That's algae.
04:22And what algae needs, it needs sunlight, it needs warm weather,
04:26but also it needs nutrients.
04:28And there are far too many nutrients in the river now.
04:32And that's put in there in the form of pollution.
04:34And that comes from slurry.
04:36Slurry's a big issue on the lower Towie here.
04:39And also from sewage.
04:42And of course, the fish have gone.
04:44You won't see a salmon now, let alone catch one.
04:47And along with that, disappears a lot of the wildlife too.
04:55The lower Towie winds through the valley's wide, flat bottom
04:59in sweeping curves, forever shaping the land around it.
05:03And a great example of this is by Aber Gwyli.
05:08I'm walking through a wet meadow,
05:10which is a meadow that floods in the winter.
05:13It's called Wain Fawr Meadow.
05:15And look at it.
05:15And it's stunning.
05:17Absolutely jam-packed full of buttercups.
05:20But I'm here to have a look at a place called Bishop's Pond.
05:25Now, it's named after Thomas Beck, a local bishop
05:28who wanted to landscape the land here
05:31to make the most of the river Towie.
05:33But the great flood of 1802 beat him to it
05:37because there was a big meander here.
05:40The river meandered around,
05:41but the great flood cut off that meander
05:44and formed a huge oxbow lake.
05:47It's 5.5 hectares in all.
05:50One of the biggest in the whole of Wales.
05:53And I'm going to go down and see what I can find there.
06:02You wouldn't believe we just hop on a skip away from the A40 here.
06:07But you can hear the traffic behind me.
06:10There's a lot of wildlife.
06:11There's a heron over there perched up.
06:15A lot of fish in here.
06:17So sticklebark, a young perch, maybe even a young pike.
06:22But there are damselflies everywhere.
06:24All over these lily pads.
06:26There are, I think they're common blue.
06:29Yeah, common blue damselflies.
06:31The males are clasping the females.
06:33And then she's laying her eggs then.
06:37That's lovely to see.
06:39And what's that one?
06:41Hang on.
06:42A dragonfly.
06:43Quite a short but stocky one.
06:47Oh, that's lovely.
06:48That is beautiful.
06:49It's a broad bodied chaser.
06:51It's got like a light blue, a powdery blue body.
06:54A little bit of a black tip on the tail.
06:57But then it's got these yellow markings down its flanks here.
07:03That is really lovely.
07:06And to think there is, what, five and a half hectares of pond.
07:10Imagine having this at the bottom of your garden.
07:12That'd be quite cool, wouldn't it?
07:19From the fertile lands of the Tawi Valley rose castles and grand estates.
07:25Each a mark of ambition.
07:28Arguably the finest of them all is Dinefwr on the edge of Llandeilo.
07:34Today the estate is managed by the National Trust.
07:38And while the architecture is impressive,
07:40I'm here to focus on the wilder side of the place.
07:44I've come here because it's right in the middle of the fallow deer rutting season.
07:50So the males, the bucks, will all be coming together now to attract the females.
07:56So I'm going to go looking for them.
07:58But it's not as easy as you think it is because there's so much vegetation.
08:03Look at the height in some of the bracken here.
08:06There could be one or two hidden up here.
08:08So I'm going to have to use my ears as much as my eyes.
08:17With at least five breeding bucks across the park, each will have his favourite rutting spot.
08:23To find the most active one, staying mobile with the crew is key.
08:27But after two hours, no luck.
08:38Hear that? That's the dominant buck.
08:43Bellowing away over there.
08:45Now, they're not tame animals.
08:49You know, they can be quite aggressive.
08:51And we've had special permission to come off the path.
08:54But I'm going to make my host to keep enough distance 50, 60 metres away.
09:01But just to get out of the open and have a look at this big buck if we can.
09:26What a stonking animal.
09:30Huge palm-made antlers.
09:34Big, thick neck, muscular neck.
09:37He's calling now just to ward off other bucks.
09:41His group of females, called does, are hidden amongst the trees,
09:46out of sight of any rival buck.
09:56What's incredible about these animals, you know, at the beginning of the rut,
10:01the big bucks, the dominant bucks, weigh maybe 90, 95 kilos.
10:06But then at the end of the rut, you know, because they've been chasing and mating and fighting,
10:15they'll lose 25, maybe 30% of their body weight.
10:19And it'll take the whole of the winter for them to put that weight back on again.
10:31He's just got up and he's walking away.
10:34It might be another buck or it might be a doe that's come out.
10:38And, do you know what, I can see him.
10:40I can see him through the trees now.
10:42Really hidden.
10:45There's a much younger buck.
10:47He's just come out of the trees.
10:49He has got antlers but they're nowhere near as impressive.
10:52They're much smaller, much thinner.
10:56They haven't grown the sort of palmate bits yet.
10:58And I reckon that's why, that's why the dominant male got up probably again to assert his dominance,
11:05you know, to bellow a little bit, to march up and down.
11:08Because the bellowing is really all they want to do.
11:12They don't want to fight.
11:13They'll only fight if they meet another buck who is about the same size.
11:18But, you know, if they can, they want to avoid that at all, of course.
11:24What's going on in the trees?
11:27Oh, hello.
11:28And what he's doing now is what's called a phlemon response.
11:32It's where they lift the upper lip, like that, and they sniff.
11:36And they do that, you know, to see if the females are in season.
11:42And that's when they'll mate.
11:44Once they get a response, they think, yep, this one's in season.
11:47If she's willing, then that's when they'll mate.
11:53It's successful with the ladies, anyway.
11:56Can't quite see exactly what's going on, but I think I know what's going on behind the trees there.
12:00Give them a bit of privacy, I reckon. Leave them alone.
12:12For generations, farms and estates in the Towie Valley have been shaped by their stowed walls.
12:18But every so often, those walls need skilled hands to put them right again.
12:24I'm at the old Taliaris estate to meet Mal Edwards, who's repairing a section of dry stone wall.
12:32Hello there, Mal.
12:33Oh, hello, Yolo.
12:34How are you, boy? Good to see you.
12:36Yeah, it's you too.
12:36Good to see you.
12:37Yeah.
12:37I'll tell you one thing.
12:38This is something I always wanted to do when I was younger.
12:42Dry stone walling, but I never learnt it.
12:45So how do you go about it then?
12:46Say the trees come over here now, knock the wall down.
12:49Do you then dismantle the whole thing and start from the bottom up?
12:53Yeah, absolutely.
12:54Strip it right back to the beginning, yeah, and then cut footings down.
12:58Put some really good stones in that act as a butt dress.
13:01And then, yeah, build up from there then.
13:03Sure, I know there are different styles all over the UK, aren't there?
13:08Is this a sort of Towie Valley style?
13:11I'd assume so.
13:12I mean, that section of wall has been there since the 1700s.
13:15It's Georgian, so you could easily assume that that's a Towie Valley style,
13:20being that old, you know?
13:21You have to try and make sure that a lot of the stone reaches through.
13:24As you lift the course, you're supposed to heart up and carry on,
13:27and there's not meant to be ripped joints going through it.
13:29Every time there's a joint, you're meant to cross it over,
13:33which is obviously quite a challenge when you've got random stone
13:36that's not uniform.
13:37But then it's not possible for me to get the stones precise.
13:41So there's always going to be gaps,
13:43so potentially there's really good nesting habitat in there
13:46for all kinds of small birds.
13:48And you're in the shade here as well with this tree, isn't it?
13:51It's a lovely spot.
13:52Yeah, it's great, yeah.
13:53It's bright sun today, but this is invaluable for the cattle.
13:56They love this space.
13:57I can see they've been rubbing you.
13:59Look, you can see the hair, can you, on the post there.
14:02That's it.
14:03No doubt the birds will be stealing that
14:04and then taking it into the wall for nesting.
14:06Every nest for miles around here is going to have ginger nesting material.
14:10I reckon it'll be for a fair old while.
14:12Yeah, absolutely.
14:13Oh, nice one, Mal.
14:14Nice to meet you, mate.
14:15Yeah, you too.
14:15Really nice to meet you.
14:16Keep going, right?
14:17I don't want to disrupt you at all.
14:19Take care.
14:20Ta-ra now.
14:20Ta-ra.
14:27Just as I'm leaving,
14:29one of the nearby mature oaks has caught my attention.
14:35Look at this.
14:36Just walking past this big old oak tree here.
14:39And it's got a split in it.
14:40We can see the bees flying in and out.
14:42Come to have a look.
14:43And yeah, there's a honey bee's nest there.
14:44Wild honey bee nest.
14:45It's a brilliant place for them because it's nice and sheltered there.
14:49And then with all the leaves, of course, you know, it's quite cool in there as well.
14:53And Cheryl's come in to see if she can pick up the noise.
14:57Can you pick up the sound chair?
14:58Yeah.
14:59Yeah.
14:59It's there.
15:00But it's a perfect place for them.
15:02When I was a kid, I used to find loads of honey bee nests like that.
15:06I used to go looking for owl nests, you know, looking in the holes.
15:08You'd find honey bees often.
15:09I don't see all that many anymore.
15:11But this is ideal here.
15:13The farmer is a really brilliant farmer.
15:16He farms in an organic, regenerative way.
15:20So you've got the fields here are full of flowers.
15:23You know, there's buttercups everywhere.
15:25And he's lovely.
15:25He's planted an orchard.
15:27All that, of course, the bees are going to love.
15:28But where the comb is, you can't see the comb because it's hidden.
15:32There's some holes going in to the centre, to the heart of that oak.
15:36And that's where the comb will be very, very well protected in there.
15:41Brilliant.
15:42Nice to see, though.
15:43Really nice to see.
15:51Several ancient monuments are scattered throughout the Tewi Valley.
15:55But none are more impressive than Garn Goch.
15:59A huge Iron Age settlement on the slopes of the Black Mountain near Llangadog.
16:07I'm on Garn Fawr now with Garn Fawr behind me over there.
16:12Garn Fawr actually means small fort.
16:15You can see some of the ramparts either side.
16:17This would have been one of the entrances in here.
16:21And Garn Fawr is huge.
16:23It's about the size of four or five rugby pitches in there.
16:27And go back about two and a half thousand years.
16:29And there would have been several hundred people living in there.
16:33Farmers, traders.
16:34And they also built ramparts.
16:36You can see the remnants of them.
16:38The big lines of rock there.
16:40So it would have been a stronghold really.
16:44Would have dominated this whole area for hundreds of years.
16:48Right up until around AD 70.
16:51When the Romans first arrived up the Tewi Valley.
16:54And they would have been no match for the Romans.
16:58With their trained soldiers.
16:59A whole trained army as well.
17:02But what I like about it is that it's been abandoned.
17:04It's quiet here now.
17:05I've seen nobody up here all day.
17:07But as the trees and the bracken and the gorse has encroached.
17:12Wildlife has found its way back in.
17:28I love coming up here to Gairngoch.
17:31There's the history of course.
17:32I find that fascinating.
17:34There's also I see and I hear birds that have disappeared from vast areas of the Welsh countryside.
17:40There's a distant cuckoo over there.
17:43There's a skylak singing as well.
17:45Love listening to skylaks.
17:47Don't hear that many of them anymore.
17:49And over here there's a tree pipette displaying.
17:54Constantly flying down.
17:56Parachuting down and landing on top of a small tree then.
18:00This is a migrant that's not that long back from Africa.
18:04And again I don't hear tree pipettes that often either.
18:07Lovely to listen to all these birds.
18:21I've come up now to the top of Garn Fawr.
18:26And really it's just have a look at the view.
18:28It's probably the best place to get a lovely view of a big chunk of the Tawi Valley.
18:35You can see all the way from Thandeilo there.
18:38And just out of sight around the corner there is Llanam Dhyfri.
18:43Stunning, absolutely stunning.
18:44But it is a valley that's under threat.
18:47It's under threat.
18:48A big energy company wants to build pylons right up the valley.
18:52Because in recent years there's been a proliferation of wind farms on some of the hills surrounding the valley.
18:58We need green energy.
18:59Of course I'm very supportive of that.
19:01But then of course you've got to find some way of getting that energy to the national grid.
19:07And then to the big towns and the cities where it's needed.
19:10And the proposal is for a line of pylons right up the valley here.
19:16Well, my thought and it's surely, surely you don't want to destroy that.
19:31The Avon Southair is one of many tributaries feeding the Tawi.
19:37Cleaner than the lower reaches, it supports a healthy number of resident fish.
19:41And provides a vital nursery for salmon, a species now in serious decline.
19:47I'm meeting a team from Natural Resources Wales near Llangadog who are monitoring fish numbers.
19:54They're electrofishing, using a mild electric current to briefly stun fish so they can be safely netted and recorded.
20:05Hello there.
20:06Hiya.
20:07There's a good selection of fish in there, isn't there?
20:09Yes, we've got some bullheads, we've got some lamprey and salmon.
20:14I haven't seen any trout yet.
20:17Right, so this is a bullhead.
20:19Oh yeah, yeah.
20:20So he's, well he's an adult bullhead, so he's above about 50 mil there.
20:26So you don't measure the bullhead?
20:28No, we don't.
20:28Yeah, so that will just be a count.
20:31Looks like we've got salmon here, so...
20:34They're beautifully marked.
20:36Love salmon.
20:37Yeah.
20:37Nice to see salmon as well.
20:39You know, you hear so much bad news, it's nice to see good a few salmon.
20:42Yeah, definitely.
20:44I see you mark it by putting that just where the fork is in the tail.
20:49Yeah, that's how we measure our freshwater fish.
20:51We put a mark on a piece of paper and then we'll take this back to the lab and then
20:55we'll put it on a light board and then we'll have a cluster of markings then so we can determine
21:02whether they're this year's or last year's.
21:04And it makes it better for the fish because they go straight back in the water.
21:07Yeah, definitely.
21:08We're not handling them for as long.
21:10Just putting the mark on and then they can go back in.
21:17I asked Ben Wilson, Principal Fisheries Advisor, what the future looks like for salmon and sea trout stocks in Wales.
21:25To me, to the untrained eye, this looks like a good river because it shed a really nice variety of
21:32fish, good number of fish.
21:33Yeah.
21:34Is it good still?
21:36I mean, we had four or five species there, didn't we?
21:38We had a good number of salmon and that looked really encouraging given the status of salmon stocks in Wales.
21:43We've seen something like 60, 70% drop in salmon numbers across Wales.
21:48But we've seen a drop in trout numbers as well.
21:51So it's not a great picture, to be perfectly honest.
21:54We need to focus on water quality, water quality and water temperature.
21:59But climate change is only going to exacerbate all those other pressures, pollution, land use change, barriers to migration.
22:07Most of the problem is probably what's going on at sea, for salmon in particular.
22:10For every 100 salmon that used to go to sea, we used to get maybe 20 or 30 back.
22:15We're lucky to see three now.
22:18So what's going on at sea is a really big problem.
22:20It's a bit of a black box.
22:22Is it sea fishing pressure?
22:24Is it bycatch at sea?
22:26Or more likely, it's changing climate.
22:28We know that they're growing less quickly when they are at sea.
22:32But at least, you know, it was nice to see so many fish here today.
22:35Because it's only, well you've only been in the river, well less than an hour I think.
22:39And to see that many fish, for me, is quite happening.
22:50North of Llandyfri marks the southern edge of the Cambrian Mountains, where the Tewi winds its way through a narrower
22:57valley flanked by steep hills.
23:00It feels wilder and more remote.
23:04This special area of conservation is home to several stunning ancient woodlands.
23:14I've come to Gwentfruddinasa, SPB Reserve.
23:18It's a fantastic place.
23:20It's been coming here for decades now.
23:22And the best time to come is early May, just after sunrise.
23:27Because you've got the birds singing, you've got bluebells as well.
23:31Look at this.
23:31And the Welsh name for these, I love the Welsh name, is Clychair Gorg.
23:35The cuckoo's bells, because they appear and they flower just around the time that you hear your first cuckoo.
23:43It's a brilliant time to come.
23:49The reserve is valued for its ancient oak woodland, a habitat now increasingly scarce.
23:56But the impact of climate change is clear.
23:59A succession of severe storms has damaged several mature trees, snapping some in half like twigs.
24:07With so few ancient woodland left in Britain, protecting these old oaks is important.
24:16Oh, have a look at this.
24:19It's a cockchafer beetle, also known as a maybug.
24:25I'll hold him on my hand.
24:26I hope he doesn't fly away too soon.
24:28There he is.
24:29Look at the size of that thing.
24:31And they're brilliant.
24:32They all emerged this time of year.
24:33I put out a moth trap about once a month.
24:36And I catch these in late April and through May.
24:39Hence the name, of course, maybug.
24:41They used to be really common, like a lot of the invertebrates.
24:44They've got scarcer over the years.
24:47They're still fairly widespread.
24:48But they're important food for bats.
24:52Some of the bats love them.
24:54You know, you imagine a bat and you catch that.
24:56Well, that's a three course meal for you just for one night.
24:59And of course, as they decline, well, the bats are having a hard time too.
25:03But it's a lovely, lovely big old beetle.
25:06I'll let you crawl a bit right then.
25:08I'm going to put you back now.
25:09Oh, there he goes.
25:10There he goes.
25:10Look at that.
25:11Look at that.
25:13And you can actually hear it as it buzzes and off it goes, like a big old helicopter.
25:18Beautiful.
25:30There's another woodland bird that everyone I know, every birdwatcher that comes to Wales
25:34wants to see and to hear.
25:36And that, that's this one.
25:38Can you hear it?
25:39It's like spinning a 10-pence coin on a wooden table.
25:42It's a, it's a wood warbler.
25:47It's a brilliant to hear it.
25:48It's not one I hear in most places now in Wales, but dinner squam food.
25:55There he goes.
25:55There he goes.
25:56Dinner squam food here.
25:57It's fantastic.
25:58And what I love about it, it goes again.
26:04It's got two parts to the song.
26:06First of all, it's got that spinning coin.
26:11And then it'll do a chew, chew, chew, chew, chew, chew at the end sometimes as well.
26:24Now, I'm, I'm, I'm not the biggest fan of a lot of our warblers.
26:28Some of them, to be honest, are pretty boring, right?
26:30But this one is really nice.
26:32It's got a yellowy, greeny back, bright white belly here.
26:37What I love about it is, it sings with such gusto that it vibrates.
26:44It actually shakes.
26:48It's, it's a brilliant little bird.
26:50It really is.
26:59My journey along this remarkable valley ends a few miles north of Llinbryany, up in the Tawi forest.
27:09Despite dense conifer stands supporting less wildlife than the deciduous woods, there's usually a few birds around, drawn to areas
27:17of birch trees along the streams.
27:27And this is the Tawi, in the heart of the Tawi forest here.
27:33And it's, it's an incredible river.
27:35And I've, I've really enjoyed all the way from, from the mouth of Llanstephan, below Llanstephan Castle,
27:41with a little stone chart telling me off for venturing into its territory, up past Bishop's Pond, somewhere I'd never
27:48been before,
27:48enjoying all the dragonflies there.
27:51And the memorable day, with beautiful light, with the fallow deer buck, halfway through their rut.
27:59And then on, of course, upwards to Dinasquenfrud, the RSPB reserve, with this wonderful array of woodland birds.
28:06And yes, the Tawi is another one of these rivers that has its issues with pollution, with declining fish populations.
28:12But it's nice to know that the sow there, one of the tributaries, still has a good population of small
28:19fish.
28:19But this isn't the end for the Tawi, it carries on up here.
28:25It'll split further several times before it ends up right out on the Cambrian Mountains in the distance.
28:37Next time I'll explore the Tawi Valley, where I'll find a slow worm hunting, I'll also watch an otter fishing,
28:48and find a pair of kessels feeding their chicks.
28:51.
28:52.
29:11.
29:13You
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