Relationship with Dyffryn Peris

Born here, bred here… (laughs)… and just love the place - the mountains, the scenery, the fact that it is a small area, rural, the community. Haven’t really known anything else, you know. Not long term. Both sides of my family come from the village. You know everyone. Pretty much. Its nice to think there is history here, going back a couple of centuries probably. I go away now and again, but its always nice to come home.

This is home for 73 years. I was born here - well, in Bangor, in the old St David’s hospital - brought up in Deiniolen, now I live in Llanberis. I walk in the valley from my home every day - not even the Coronavirus will stop that!

I suppose I see it all as home really, because I have almost always lived here - I was born here, grew up here. Where I was born and brought up is a farm just outside Llanrug, so that was the only space I ever knew. Me and my sister always played there, had 20-30 years of extremely intimate connection with an extremely small area of 10 acres or something. We never really left, all the time working, playing. So that’s still – maybe I’m starting to lose it a bit now – that was the default geography of my dreams as well. Dream spaces are different, and they are not always exactly the same but its where a lot of my dreams would revolve around as well, the geography of the place. I moved away for about 4 years but knowing I wanted to come back. I do like going away sometimes, but its never really the same. I’m not sure where home stops. It probably does stop around Pen y pass – maybe Capel Curig - and then past Caernarfon. There’s a certain circle around the area, it’s not like if I go beyond that its not home outside that, because there’s an extended home boundary around that as well.

I’ve always lived here. Well I was born in Bangor, everyone was born in Bangor. At the St David’s hospital. Where the old C&A was. Where Matalan is now. I was raised in Llanrug and I was there until I was 18. In the summer holidays, you were out with your friends after breakfast, say 9, 10 o’clock, and you’d go home for tea at 6 o clock. And you were up in the hills, around the village, down in the river, having a bit of a swim. And all these places have names. The little lake bit in the river that we swam in was called Llyn Docs (Llyn Doctor) and we used to go up the hill behind Cefn Du in Llanrug and have picnics at Cerrig Arthur.

I’m getting more and more milltir sgwâr as time goes on. How much there is here to explore. I’ve been here since the 70s. When I moved from Llanberis to Cwm y Glo, people were like ‘oh no, you’re leaving’ and I thought ‘what, I’m only going up the road’ but it was like going to a whole new place. Now i’ve moved back to Llanberis and its like rediscovering it again, I keep finding new paths and places that I never knew existed. I love talking with the neighbours in Welsh, and I’ve got a proper local accent now, I really feel part of the place.

I first came here – to Fachwen - in 1992 from Bangor, where I grew up. When I was in school I always had a kind of background envy of people who lived in the mountains. I don’t know why, there was like a cohesion between them, they were pretty cool. When I moved to Fachwen there was a massive group of about 40 of us. It was a huge mob - You could always go to the pub and there would be 10 – 12 of that mob that you’d know, plus visiting nutters – runners and bikers and generally exploring the hills and quarries… Then Rhiwlas, marriage, kids and all that. Now I’m in Cwm-y-Glo. I realized in the last 5 years that that’s my home really. It is. I have thought recently about having the contours of the valley tattooed on me – from snowdon all the way up. From the Snowdon Partnership plan that I drew. It looks like an island, all the contours. It’s a nice kind of … I don’t really want to ever leave this valley at all.

I think its beautiful. Ancient. We are in the remnant of mountains (was it a caldera?) that was 36,000 foot tall, and now I look at the rocks and woodland and the waterways - all this water - all part of, a result of, that ancient past. I love that it hasn’t changed in terms of the underlying landscape, the bones, although obviously the ancient oaks have gone and the sheep are shaping what grows here now: I moved here in ‘92 because my passion has been to establish a creative way of living off and with the land, as natural a way as I can, bringing a post modern contemporary design to ancient ways. I feel I’m nearly there, but also on the verge of giving up because of some of the bureaucracy and lack of support financially. It’d be OK if I was some kind of massive landowner, or planting a new forest, but there’s no support for working with an existing ancient forest.

Our relationship from the very beginning is through connections with the church. When we first came St Peris was linked to Llanberis, Cwm y Glo, Llanrug and Llanddeiniolen. Somewhere further back Llanddeniolen fell out with Penisarwaun. Now we have both in our group of churches - 6 churches in all! So we have a strong sense of the valley, of the line, through all the church things. So although we are from Nant Peris, we have a relationship with the valley, and the people, all the way to Llanrug. And when we first came here, our Nant Peris church was closed for what was meant to be 6 months, but it became three years. And at that point we also had services in the Pen y Gwyrd chapel – but obviously that’s not a very populated area, but we got to know people that way too.

This place is where I live. I love it here. Somehow it has become somewhere where I’ve made my home. I’ve been living here about 15 years, since 2004. I work here too: this area employs me to try to look after the nature. I go walking, looking at nature, teaching people about nature. I go from the microscopic to the huge macroscopic. From a tiny little moss in the woods to the whole hillside.

I live in Penygroes, I’ve never lived in this valley - my early childhood was in Bethesda - but I’ve been here often all my life. A lot, one way or another. First time I came here would have been about 1962, when I was 5 or 6. I just happen to recall that we must have driven over from Bethesda to Deiniolen and Down the Fachwen road, over the crossing not far from here [Brynrefail]. The rails were still down, but I assume being dismantled at the time. I did nag my father to take me to the quarry. But he was quite willing to be nagged, he was as interested as I was. And then coming to the - what is now the slate museum - when it was still the workshops, not long before the quarry was shut. So I suppose I do go back that far with Dyffryn Peris. coming back again when the museum opened, and when the lake railway opened, and exploring the quarry.

I’ve lived here part time for years. I was going to move but I think I’ll stay here now, with this Coronavirus. Take the house off the market. This house is an asset. People are going to want to have their holidays here. They are going to want to move here.

I think first of all I’d say my relationship is with the landscape because every morning when I wake up and open the curtains and look at the side of the mountain there. And its always different every day. Sometimes with the rise of the sun there’s a line of pink along the top and then sometimes you get the golden light lower down and sometimes it’ll look quite velvety and sometimes it’ll look quite threatening. In some days it is much more three dimensional than others – the quite flattened and some lights draw it out. Sometimes it feels closer to you than others. The snow seems to minimize the distance.

Its very dramatic here and rugged. But I am sometimes torn because I come from somewhere else. I feel like an incomer definitely. Yes, I speak Welsh, I come from not that far away, just another town in North Wales. I feel very much connected to the land. And to nature. And before I came to live here I used to come to this area quite a lot anyway. I had a boyfriend who lived over here. Maybe I don’t belong here. Maybe I don’t have that sort of connection. When I go back to my home town, there’s such deep connections there. I feel very connected there – I suppose because I’ve grown up there.

I’ve lived here for slightly longer than the twelve nearly thirteen years of my son’s life, in four different houses. Three of which are in the same corner of Brynrefail, within five houses of each other. Altogether I’ve been here in the valley 18 years - I was in Cwm y Glo before Brynrefail. I’ve always thought of it as a bit like ‘wherever I lay my hat’, in a way. But now I think about it, I don’t think I’ve lived anywhere as long as have lived here: I only lived 14 years in the place where I grew up. It’s not far off the line of longitude from where I was born, in Scotland. I have to admit there is something appealing about the place. It has a landscape in it that is so inspiring I don’t wish to travel to any far flung corner of the planet to see a globally awe-inspiring view. There are several including the view from the bridge, the end of the village up along the lake with Castell Dolbadarn in the distance and Yr Wyddfa above it. The site of the quarries, all those workings, above the quarries, down from them. This valley - anywhere from Nantperis, its so dynamic and light and the grandeur. There are so many people, if i think about it, that live in just this stretch, who are - they are my community. My community mostly lives in this valley. And then there’s Cwm Cadnant, where I spend half my day in the woods, working with the community. It’s a different valley - the river comes from Bethel - but it is part of the same watershed, along with the Seiont, draining into Caernarfon. I follow the life of the - the course of the two rivers that lead to Caernarfon. I take time to pull balsam from the banks, i engage the communities, i try to mull over how the paddlers and anglers might come to some more happy agreement…

It’s my first house I’ve called my home really. Because my parents moved all the time so there’s never really been a home I can go back to. I feel like I came here because of the landscape and because of an activity [climbing] and my partner needed to work somewhere where there were mountains. When I arrived here - properly in 2010 - I thought god, everyone speaks Welsh. Here I am again, an outsider, because I’ve always felt like I’m an outsider. I hadn’t really been aware of anything of the culture really . And then it was like alright I am here now, I’ve spent my whole life in places where I wasn’t rooted but what I’ve tried to do here is to find my roots. So I am learning welsh - ar Dydd Llun mi wnes i siarad Cymraeg am 3 awr, ym Mhontio!

Well I’m sort of in it. It’s part of where I live as distinct to something separate. It’s a bit like a portal. I’m getting to know it - the people and Wales and Welsh culture, the biosphere. What’s going on. There’s a lot to it. It would be very hard to envisage living somewhere else.

I’ve only visited a few times, but there is something special about this landscape. It’s like Dartmoor, its there too. Something ancient about it. I don’t get the same feeling in the Pennines or anywhere like that. The quarries too, add to that feeling. The inside of the mountain exposed like that. Its an intimate connection with the land.

I can still remember the first time I came here. I must have been in my teens and I came to Pen y Pass and I looked down the valley and I thought it was like the most horrific landscape I’d ever seen. It was like this boulder field, it looked like the dark side of the moon. I just thought it was so bleak. It was probably a day trip out with the family from the Wirral. Generally I thought of North Wales as somewhere we’d take maiden aunts out for a drive. When [my to be husband] said he had a cottage in the pass, I put those two images together and thought oh fuck! And then I suppose I can remember staying in a youth hostel in this area, with my friend who was really into it, and it was wet and we just trudged from youth hostel to youth hostel not knowing what to do with ourselves, really, hoping to meet attractive young men or something. And then coming here with the family, from when we had kids all the way to the present day, I think I just had to learn to love it. We were going to spend a lot of time here. And I have grown to love it more, and appreciate it more. But I think to really appreciate a place you need to understand it. You need to understand the ecology of it and I’d like to understand more about sheep farming, hill farming, and how that works, and how it might work in the future.