Mountain dwellers from the mists of time

While my school friends jetted off to Spain, my holidays were always spent in North Wales as a child. My father was born in Snowdonia during the war and lived in a cottage opposite Snowdon. This cottage has stayed in the family ever since and every year we would go to canoe and climb some peaks.

While we were climbing the mountains we would look forward to spotting the strange, shaggy mountain goats that roam wild here.

At New Year, I went to stay with my parents who now live here. As I was driving back from a walk, I spotted a herd clinging to the side of a disused slate quarry in the pouring rain.

I spoke to my dad about them that night. This particular herd of goats live in the disused Dinorwic Slate Quarry and graze in the sessile oak woodland opposite Llanberis and just up the road from my parents’ cottage.

I’ve always had a fascination for these prehistoric-looking goats and decided to make the time to watch them properly on this visit.

With three cameras, three lenses and a tripod to lug about I don’t want to be searching over difficult terrain for the animals. My camera rucksack can weigh more than 25kgs, so it’s easier if I can walk straight to where they are! I checked the quarry first, but there was no sign of them there so I headed into the wood instead. I didn’t have any joy here either so I walked out onto a slate slag heap which protruded out into the valley and served as a vantage point back into the trees.

I spotted a few white spots moving through the wood and so I got my binoculars out for a closer look. It was the herd.

The herd numbered about 20 in total. It seemed to be a breeding herd as there were nannys and kids, some young males and only one large billy who unfortunately had a broken horn. I was slightly disappointed, he wasn’t exactly the “alpha male” I was hoping for. I headed down towards them and when I got to within about 100 yards, the unmistakably strong whiff of goat hit me. It was dusk by now and they were beginning to settle down for the night. I now had them pinpointed ready for the following day and so set off on the two-mile hike back to the cottage.

On the way back home I saw another herd of goats on a wide ledge in the smaller Vivien quarry. There were mainly billys in this herd with impressive swept back horns. I watched as they tussled with silver birch saplings and occasionally locked horns with their rivals. So, I decided to return here in the morning instead as I thought this herd would be better to photograph.

It was dark as I left the quarry, and the ravens were honking from a slate ledge. I had forgotten my torch, making the walk home a bit tricky, but it had been worth it. I was out well before dawn, in spite of the rain. I took my torch this time and shone the beam down to the ledge in the quarry where I had seen the goats yesterday. My hunch that they would stay put overnight was right.

I made my way carefully down towards them, stopping 30 yards away and sheltering by the quarry face until first light. I wanted the goats to know I was there so that they could get used to my presence. As the morning light began to penetrate through the mist, the billys stood up and stretched before picking a route that I hadn’t spotted up to the top of the quarry. I watched with dismay as they picked their way over the scree with a sense of purpose. There was no way I could follow them along this route.

I made my way back up the side of the quarry. By the time I had caught up with them they had joined up with the breeding herd that I had seen yesterday and were grazing in the dense oak woodland that surrounds the quarry.

The goats nibbled at holly and bilberry bushes. They pruned back heather, swallowed bark, twigs, grass and even ate moss.

The saying that “there is nothing a goat doesn’t eat” was evidently true and it occurred to me that this herd was actually shaping the forest floor. There was evidently some tension between the billys as they approached the females. Occasionally I got photographs of tussles between them.

By early afternoon it stopped raining. The herd wandered out of the forest gloom and into the old slate quarry. They passed the remains of tiny cottages where the slate workers once lived. I photographed them here standing dramatically against the stark mountainous landscape that is typical of Snowdonia. These were the kind of images that I was hoping to capture on camera.

They continued on heading down towards some of the lower levels of the quarry. One billy accidentally bumped into another, causing it to turn and fight. They both reared up on their hind legs before crashing down on one another. As their horns clashed the noise echoed off the slate walls. Argument resolved they turned and headed on with the rest of the herd.

By mid-afternoon their pace slowed and some lay down to chew their cud. I took the opportunity to get really close. I had now been with them for eight hours and they were quite used to me. I knelt down and crawled to within three metres of one billy, but stopped short of him when he bent his horns down towards me and eyed me up in silent warning.

I spent another hour carefully creeping around the herd taking photographs. It was starting to get dark and I assumed that they would spend the night here. But without warning they all suddenly stood up and headed off, apparently looking for more grazing.

I was quite far away from my car so with some reluctance I left the goats and began the steep climb back. Despite spending a whole day with the herd I never did get used to the pungent smell of goat – how anyone can eat goat’s cheese is beyond me!

How the goats came to Wales

These sure-footed creatures are so tough that they can survive in this unforgiving mountainous terrain. They are believed to originate from the Middle East and were brought over to this country by Neolithic man who prized them for their skins, meat and milk.Farmers during the Iron Age took the goats to the mountains as they were the only animal able to graze the precipitous crags.

The number of goats declined in the 19th century when they were replaced by sheep.

The goats that were left became feral.