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From the Wikipedia :- "Born Ernest James Perrin in Manchester, he has lived in Wales, England and France on occasions, from where he contributed to the Guardian Country Diary. Before turning to writing, he worked in Cwm pennant as a shepherd. As a writer, he has made regular contributions to a number of newspapers and climbing magazines. As a climber, he has developed new routes, as well as making solo ascents of a number of established routes."
AmeriCymru spoke to Jim about his new book Snowdon: The Story of a Welsh Mountain'
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AmeriCymru: It is evident from your book that you have visited Snowdon on many occasions. How would you describe your relationship with the mountain?
Jim: Long-standing, intimate and passionate – also a marriage of mind as well as body. There are so many dimensions to the mountain that I find fascinating. And it is, of course, extraordinarily beautiful.
AmeriCymru: Care to describe your book ''Snowdon'' for our readers? What inspired you to write it?
Jim: In a sense it’s a biography of the mountain, in that there’s an element of recounting chronological “life” story. It’s highly discursive, certainly not a guidebook, and it tries to explain and depict as many elements relevant to the mountain as possible within the relatively short space of 240 pages – from geology, physical form and folklore through to its importance as contemporary recreational focus.
AmeriCymru: In your book you explain that Snowdon is a special mountain for the Welsh. In what sense has it been special historically?
Jim: The highest point of any nation always has significance – mythically, oropolitically. Think of your own Mount Whitney in the contiguous states. To the Welsh, Eryri – the mountainous region around Snowdon – has long been a cultural and linguistic heartland. In earlier times it was the chief resistant region against the English colonists – think of Gwynedd, where Eryri’s to be found, as a Helmand province of its time. This is why Edward 1 made such a point of holding a feast on Snowdon summit in 1284, after the defeat of Llew Olaf and the execution of his brother Dafydd. The line of Gwynedd destroyed, or so he thought, to appropriate their most potent physical symbol was crucial to his imperial aspirations. But since you can never conquer a mountain, Snowdon (the Saxon name curiously appears to be older than any extant Welsh one) emerged from the cloud it had been put under by Edward’s militarism and somehow grew into a resistant symbol of Welsh nationhood.
AmeriCymru: Can you tell us a little more about the folklore surrounding the mountain?
Jim: There isn’t another mountain in Britain that has so rich and various a folklore, from abounding tales of the faery folk that perhaps have their origin in some collective-unconscious memory of encounters with an older race of inhabitants here as Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages overlapped and succeeded each other, to the wealth of association with what became known, after it had migrated to early-medieval Europe, as “The Matter of Britain”. These were the stories centring around Arthur and Merlin that Sir Thomas Malory codified in Le Morte Darthur (excuse Malory’s French!). It seems highly likely that their early emergence had some connection with the Snowdon region, where they locate very precisely at certain sites like Dinas Emrys in Nant Gwynen (the name of which was changed by a later generation of colonialists, the English Ordnance Survey, to that tautological abomination “Nant Gwynant”, as which it remains on maps to the present day).
AmeriCymru: Which of the six best known paths to the summit do you prefer? Which would you recommend to the first time visitor?
Jim: My recommendation as a relatively straightforward introduction would be for a circuit, taking the Snowdon Ranger path from Cwellyn in ascent, which is long and easy and takes you over the crest of Snowdon’s finest cliff, Clogwyn Du’r Arddu, and then following the Bwlch Main ridge in descent, which leads you down to Rhyd Ddu, only a short step from your starting point, and gives you the best views out west to beautiful lesser hills along the Lleyn Peninsula, with a sea at either hand. Both routes are replete with association from the early literature of the mountain – Thomas Johnson, Pennant, Coleridge, Wordsworth and so on.
AmeriCymru: Where in your opinion is the most satisfying rock climbing to be found on Snowdon?
Jim: No problem answering that! Clogwyn Du’r Arddu on the northern flank is by common consent the finest cliff in Britain, the rock-climbing on it magnificently characterful and varied. But high, serious, technical, and not a place where beginners are advised to try their hand too immediately!
AmeriCymru: In your chapter ''The starting Of The Wild Idea'' there are a number of excerpts from accounts of visits to Snowdon. How prominent a role did Snowdon play in the 18th century revival of interest in the ''sublime of nature''?
Jim: It provided a perfect paradigm for Burke’s hugely influential aesthetics essay of 1757, “A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful” , which underpinned the Romantic movement that welled up towards the end of the Eighteenth Century. All the early travellers here saw it thus – Pennant and Wordsworth, who borrowed from him in true Cambridge copyist tradition, particularly. With the increasing difficulties involved in continental travel during the period of the Napoleonic Wars, Snowdon’s relative accessibility made the mountain very fashionable indeed.
AmeriCymru: Where can people go online to buy ''Snowdon''?
Jim: The book’s published by one of the great Welsh institutions, Gwasg Gomer of Llandysul, and a fabulous job they’ve done too on the production and design, from the handmade Italian endpapers to the exquisite Sion Ilar cover illustration. So buying it direct from Gomer seems a good way to keep the faith www.gomer.co.uk/
AmeriCymru: What''s next for Jim Perrin?
Jim: My next book’s already out, as of March 2013 – it’s called Shipton and Tilman: The Great Decade of Himalayan Exploration (Hutchinson, £25), and is about the quirky 1930s friendship between the two men who, venturesome eco-conscious ragamuffins that they were, became the model and ideal for ethical mountain activity thereafter. Of all my books, it’s the one I’ve most enjoyed writing! I wanted to call it “The Spies Who Invented the Yeti” (they were, and they did), but the publishers thought best to play straight. At the moment I’m working on a collection of stories – my first attempt at fiction. It’s due out from the little Welsh publishing house of Cinnamon Press in the fall of 2013 under the title of A Snow Goose and other stories . Next after that is a critical biography of the major Victorian miscellaneous prose writer George Borrow, who’ll be known to AmeriCymru followers as the author of Wild Wales – the best book of travel ever published about any part of the British Isles, and one of the strangest too.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Jim: “Don’t follow leaders/Watch the parking meters”, and get your asses over to Wales asap to see what Snowdon’s like for yourselves. Pick up on the clues in my book, though, on how to stay away from the crowds, and study the O.S. 1:25,000 map very carefully, even though it is a product of the English military establishment. See you there among the clouds!
If you only buy one book about Snowdon in your lifetime make sure it's this one!
It is clear throughout that the author has enjoyed a peculiarly intimate lifelong relationship with Eryri and never more so than when he recounts his plan for a trip around the mountain in the opening chapter:-
"The late Showell Styles, one of this mountain regions most ardent and articulate devotees, in a charming, knowledgeable,garrulous book,The Mountains of North Wales, proposed that you should do just this as a rapid, minds-eye journey,a girdling of the mountain at a distance of a mile or a mile and a half (no kilometric nonsense for old Showell) more across them. When I started to plan this book, Showells idea grew on me.Why not follow the circuit of the peak not just rapidly and in the minds eye, but lingeringly and in reality?"
Starting out from the Miner's Track the author circumnavigates the mountain describing its many faces as he goes. It quickly becomes clear that he is familiar with every path and rock face along the way, indeed we learn that he has been visiting and climbing Snowdon since he was a boy. But the account never descends into mere personal reminiscence as we are regaled with details about the mountain's topography, wildlife, history and folklore and there are constant allusions to the delights which await in later chapters. It also becomes clear that Jim Perrin enjoys a comprehensive knowledge of the climbing routes to Snowdons summit, a theme which is explored more fully in the books final chapter 'Colonising The Vertical'
Chapter Two delves into the rich mythology and folklore which wraps its mantle around Snowdon like an ancient mist. Here we learn about the 'Lady Of The Lake', a story common to both north and south Wales, which hints at early and tragic encounters between Bronze and Iron age cultures. We are also introduced to the 'afanc' of Glaslyn, the giant 'Rhita' and the cave of the hairy man (Ogof y Gwr Blewog ). The account of this 'triad of grotesques' is supplemented with Arthurian legend and tales of Merlin and Dinas Emrys.
The Snowdon massif was the final and most formidable bastion in the concentric array of mountain ranges which guarded the granary of Ynys Mon and the Kingdom of Gwynedd. Its importance as a natural fortress in the cultural consciousness of the Welsh people is discussed in Chapter Three.
Subsequent chapters examine the mountain from the perspectives of antiquaries, cartographers, artists, art historians and modern tourists and local inhabitants. The final chapter deals with rock climbing routes on Snowdon and the history of their discovery and development. It should come as no surprise that Jim Perrin gives us an authoritative account here, since he has written extensively on rock climbing in Britain and with particular reference to the Welsh mountains and Snowdon ( see this page - Jim Perrin search results - for further titles )
Jim Perrin's treatment of these themes is richly detailed and massively engaging throughout.
This is truly 'the story of a mountain'. The next best thing to being there!
"Esme's passions are treated sensitively and honestly in this memoir, brought again to life so graphically by Teleri" Lord Dafydd Ellis Thomas
Buy 'Esme: Guardian of Snowdonia' here
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This is the story of Esme Kirby, the heroine of Thomas Firbank's 1939 international bestseller, I Bought A Mountain, which portrayed the rigours of farming in Snowdonia, North Wales.
Esme's marriage to Thomas ended at the beginning of the Second World War and this book takes up her life as she struggled to cope alone on the 3000 acre Dyffryn Mymbyr sheep farm. Still a young woman, she could easily have given up such an arduous life but, instead, she grew to love her vocation and appreciate the fact that she lived in the most remarkable of landscapes.
Such was her fondness for Snowdonia, and concern for its future, that she later established the Snowdonia National Park Society, a 'watchdog' to ensure that the landscape was protected from any adverse development. She also led a campaign to re-establish colonies of the native red squirrel in Anglesey. Her legacy in this beautiful, rural community continues to this day.
Teleri Bevan comes from a farming background, yet her working life was spent at the BBC where she launched Radio Wales as its Editor and later became the Head of Programmes for BBC Wales radio and television. In retirement Teleri has enjoyed writing books about women who made distinctive contributions to rural life in 20th century Wales: firstly the story of establishing Rachel's Dairy, and then recording the accomplishments of the Ladies of Blaenwern , who bred world-famous Welsh cobs.
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