Episode 1

Iolo Williams is back exploring the south Wales valleys. He heads up the Upper Clydach river to find a fantastic dipper’s nest hidden beneath a rock overhang.

One of the best places to see the scarce marsh fritillary butterfly is an old colliery site near Ystradgynlais. Another surprise is a kingfisher that’s built its nest by digging a tunnel into coal waste. In the Amman valley, a stunning oak woodland that survived the coal industry is full of nesting migrant birds from Africa.

On the hills between Pontardawe and Glanamman, Iolo finds peace within the bronze age ring cairn of Carn Llechart surrounded by reed buntings, skylarks and meadow pipits. Deep in a conifer plantation in the Neath valley is a site for Wales’s rarest breeding bird, the honey buzzard. It's so rare that only one nest is known in the whole of Wales. Iolo also visits Melincourt Falls, a brilliant places for all kinds of ferns, mosses, and liverworts.