A Great Welsh Adventure with Griff Rhys Jones

 A Great Welsh Adventure with Griff Rhys Jones A Great Welsh Adventure with Griff Rhys Jones (8 x30) is new and exclusive to ITV, produced by Modern Television. All information embargoed from press use, commercial and non-­‐commercial reproduction, and sharing in the public domain until 31st December 2013 Contacts: Sarah Gaffney Peter Gray Publicity Manager Factual Picture Publicity Manager Tel: 020 7157 3029 Tel: 0207 157 3046 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]
A Great Welsh Adventure with Griff Rhys Jones “I’m setting out on a personal odyssey, you see I was born in Wales but brought up in Essex and now I’m coming back. I want to get to grips with a wonderful, magical, remarkable country – Wales.” Griff Rhys Jones Griff Rhys Jones presents this brand new series on his native country Wales, famed for its beautiful landscapes, friendly locals and Celtic traditions. Over eight episodes, Griff explores the land of his birth, appreciating the stunning scenery and searching for his inner Welshman. In each programme Griff visits a different part of Wales; Snowdonia, the Gower Peninsula, Pembrokeshire, Anglesey, Mid Wales, Conwy, Border and the Brecon Beacons.. He is also set challenges designed to test his Celtic credentials and bring out his adventurous spirit. From searching for the Holy Grail to taking a dip in a mountain lake, Griff canoes, climbs, abseils and rides his way across the Welsh countryside in a bid to uncover the true spirit of Wales. In episode one, Griff begins his adventure in Snowdonia, an area famed for its landscapes and industrial past. He explores picturesque Portmeirion, a collection of buildings designed to resemble an Italian village by designer Clough Williams-­‐Ellis. Griff explains: “One of Wales’ most famous architect spent 50 years creating this slice of Little Italy.” He adds: “The whole place is a bit like a sort of stage set, some of these buildings are real buildings borrowed from elsewhere and brought here and some of them are fake Italian buildings and some of the additions, the ornaments, are completely false but it is an enchanted garden.”
Portmeirion is so much like a stage set it was used as the backdrop for 1960s television show The Prisoner. After that it became one of the most fashionable places to stay in Wales. Whilst in Portmeirion, Griff receives a challenge, to track down the extremely rare and elusive flower, the Snowdon Lily. He seeks out the advice of Portmeirion’s head gardener and is advised to head towards Mount Snowdon if he wants to catch a glimpse of the rare alpine bloom. Griff leaves Portmeirion in style, hitching a lift on a Celtic Longboat to Porthmadog. In the 19 century, Porthmadog was the gateway to the area’s mountain quarries and a bustling, international port, shipping slate all around the world. Industry in North Wales revolved around this export of slate and it was used to construct everything from the floor of Boston airport to the roof of Cologne Cathedral. Porthmadog is also home to the oldest surviving independent railway company in the world, the Ffestiniog Railway, which opened in 1836. Griff climbs on board to travel the 13 miles to the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, once the slate capital of the world. Huge slag heaps surround the town as each tonne of slate quarried produces 30 tonnes of waste. The quarry once employed thousands of men but the slate has now been exhausted and the industry is a shadow of its former self. Griff visits the huge quarry and takes a ride on the zip wire, which has been constructed over the top of the quarry to give visitors a bird’s eye view. The zip wire is just under a mile long and passengers can travel at almost 100 miles an hour. It is the longest and fastest zip wire in Europe. Recovering from his journey on the zip wire, Griff says: “Once you reach cruising speed, odd things happen to your face, they used to call it G-­‐Force. The sensation is literally breath-­‐taking, but much more extraordinary is the birds eye view of the sheer scale of human endeavour in excavating this vast crater.”
He adds: “I now know exactly what it’s like to be half superman, half oven ready chicken.” As well as slate, Blaenau Ffestiniog is also famed for its male voice choir, Cor Y Brythoniaid, led by choirmaster John Eifion. Singing is synonymous with Welsh culture and John explains to Griff how the choir groups were originally made up of miners. Griff is invited to join a rehearsal of the choir and soon discovers why they have won so many awards and sung on major stages throughout the world. Finally Griff heads to the slopes of Mount Snowdon where he hopes to complete his challenge and find the rare Snowdon Lily. Enlisting the help of national park officer Hywel Jones, they board the Snowdon Mountain railway, to speed up their journey. Mount Snowdon has over 1000 visitors each day so the location of a Snowdon Lily has to be kept a secret in order to protect it. The flowers have survived since the ice age and their endurance is partly due to the fact they grow in fairly inaccessible th
locations. It took Hywel two years of searching to find one and there are less than 100 plants left. He tells Griff the conditions the Snowdon Lily needs to survive: “It needs to be quite high up in a sheltered position on a north, north east facing crag where it’s cold and it also needs the correct type of rock. In other words, slightly less acidic than the majority of the rock. It’s very, very picky.”
The Snowdon Lily is so rare, will Griff be lucky enough to find one?
Interview with Griff Rhys Jones What was your experience of Wales before filming the series? “I was born in Cardiff, so I did have relatives there and we used to go there when I was little. When I started programmes for the BBC like Restoration then we spent a lot of time in Wales generally exploring around. I’m just writing a book at the moment based on the series and I realised that most of these places I had been to before. Only the Brecon Beacons were new to me. I’ve been to Hay-­‐On-­‐Wye but I’ve never been up into the Beacons before and it’s a really fascinating place. “I also made a series called Mine All Mine for ITV about 10 years ago by Russell T Davies that was set in Wales, I lived out on Gower while we filmed that. I’ve also got a cottage in Pembrokeshire. I made a series called a Pembrokeshire Farm and that was all about the restoration of the farm. So many of these places are interconnected, I know people or I know the areas. My family originally came from Betws-­‐y-­‐Coed and I’ve got friends in Anglesey, effectively most of the places I have been too before, although I didn’t know Monmouth very well funnily enough.” What is each episode about? “I always get involved when I make a series like this so there’s a lot of abseiling, climbing, canoeing, exploring Wales. I think anyone watching this series will get some sense of some of the extraordinary range of things on offer in Wales. We go coasteering off the Pembrokeshire Coast which is brilliant. Partly it’s to explore the incredible range of things there are to do and some of the things you think about Wales. We looked at Corgis and farming, we looked at choirs and we look at Welsh furniture and the obsession with Welsh furniture. There’s a huge range of things we cover really. We don’t just go there and deal with a limited amount of things.” Of all the places in Wales you visited did you have a favourite place? “We chose the places we went to quite carefully so there are eight places and we went to Conway and LLandudno, then we go to Anglesey, Snowdon and down to Mid Wales and all of them are very, very beautiful places. The other thing is they are quite distinct, there is quite a different flavour to each place. There was nowhere we went where I thought I wouldn’t want to come back here. Most places I would love to spend more time in really.” In the first episode you visit a Welsh male voice choir. What was that like? “There is a very good book by author Jan Morris about Wales, where she examines all the Welsh myths and she says that if you want to experience a Welsh male voice choir then you need to go to rehearsal. When it’s not in a concert hall suddenly the power of the choir, it’s extraordinary, we were in a little school hall and they were really fantastic. And they are all great blokes, really ordinary blokes from the town and around the area and they got together and sang extraordinary songs. They are very skilled and it was quite a challenge for me. I have sung in a choir at school but it was a long time ago and I can’t read music so I had to feel my way a little bit!” You also take a hair-­‐raising trip on a mile-­‐long zip wire? Was that frightening? “Funnily enough it wasn’t that frightening. The zip wire is rather weird as it takes off and just accelerates quite slowly. It’s not like a bungee jump you’re not heading straight down. You start off quite slowly and pick up speed as you go, then you reach speeds of about 100mph, like a human cannonball. It’s an amazing thing to do.” You are set a challenge in the first episode to try and find the elusive and rare Snowdon Lily? Had you heard about it before doing the series? “No I didn’t know about the Snowdon Lily before being set a challenge to find it but I managed to find one. In each episode I am set a challenge, some of them are a bit tongue-­‐in-­‐cheek like the search for the Holy Grail in Mid Wales and that’s connected to the fact that the Holy Grail was supposed to be kept in a house called Nanteos near Aberystwyth so I went in search of it. There are other challenges, such as when we were in Brecon I had to go for a swim in a Welsh lake, a mountain lake, so that was quite exciting.” Did you enjoy climbing Snowdon? “We were very lucky because we had fantastic weather on Snowdon. All the accounts I read about people going up Snowdon they always say ‘we climbed up there and there was fog at the top and we couldn’t see anything’. And the only times I have been up Snowdon, as I do in this programme, it was like being in the Aegean. It was the most beautiful day, we could almost see the Isle of Man. We could see Anglesey and all the places we’d been in Anglesey. “We filmed for weeks and apart from about two days we had gorgeous weather the whole time. We had two or three rainy days but the rest of the time we had marvellous blue skies and if you are out in good weather in Wales there’s nowhere in the world that’s more beautiful. I must have been very lucky. I think God wants us to publicise the fact that Wales is very beautiful!” What were the people like who you met along the way? “Everyone was really lovely and we meet a lot of wonderful people along the way such as Glyn Hyndman who took me cockling, Terry Davies who was a great rugby player and Arfon Williams from the Tacla Taid car museum. These were really lovely people.” Did you learn anything about the Welsh? “I think I learnt that Wales has got a culture which is a lot more than just coal mines and daffodils. It was an interesting experience because I’m an exile, I was born in Wales but brought up in Epping but my whole cultural background is Welsh. I moved from Wales when I was six months old so I’ve not lived in Wales but my father came from Wales and my mother and all her family is Welsh. My grandmother spoke Welsh fluently, she wrote letters in Welsh as it was her first language.” Did you learn anything about Wales along the way? “What was complicated for me was to realise that not being brought up in Wales you miss the culture, you miss the assumptions that people have about the world. Most people who live in Wales even if they don’t speak Welsh understand the whole Welsh alphabet and how it’s all pronounced. I struggled to try and learn a bit of Welsh not very successfully but that’s because I’m old. My next ambition is to learn a bit of Welsh.” Do you feel you have now proved your Celtic credentials? “I don’t think I’m ever going to be accepted by the hardcore Welsh, they think I come from London. They just think I’m a Jones from Epping. But in fact I am quite Welsh. I went to do a BAFTA interview the other day, I had been nominated for a programme I had made and the news presenter from S4C said ‘how do you feel about being up against a Welsh presenter?’ and I said ‘well I am Welsh’ and he said ‘ok stop the camera, we’ll start again’. Then he said ‘how do you feel about being up against a proper Welsh presenter?’ The truth is I’m not considered to be proper Welsh by Welsh people.” Why should viewers tune in? “I’ve watched all the programmes lots of times and I still find myself watching them again, I really like them. They move along like the clappers and there’s lots going on. With the challenge, they sort of have momentum. I’m really pleased to have made them. I really love them and I hope everyone enjoys them. It was a great trip to do. “You only have to watch a programme like this to realise what an extraordinary place we live in. We went gliding in Brecon and we went up above the landscape and you are looking down on the landscape and it’s a very, very beautiful place. “We have in Britain some of the most beautiful countryside, the most beautiful places in the world and when you see some of the footage and the way we go deep into the country and explore all sorts of aspects of a country like Wales you realise how lucky we are in Britain we’ve got all these differences. When you go into Wales you enter a different world. You could live on the Russian Steppes and you’d have to travel something like 1000 miles before you even came to a hill!” Credits
Executive Producers Series Producer and Director Griff Rhys Jones/ Rob Warr Christopher Bruce