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| | | From Shetland to the Scilly Isles, Open Country travels the UK in search of the stories, the people and the wildlife that make our countryside such a vibrant place. Each week we visit a new area to hear how local people are growing the crops, protecting the environment, maintaining the traditions and cooking the food that makes their corner of rural Britain unique.
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|  | | Centre for Alternative Technology | |
It's a storm-swept time for much of Britain, and this week, Helen Mark visits mid-Wales between the River Dovey and Cader Idris, an area which has been suffering its fair share of heavy rain and high winds.
With signs of storm damage still evident around her, Helen meets local people using those elements as a valuable commodity - the key, in fact, to survival for threatened rural communities.
Tegwyn Jones runs the hill farm on the Gwynedd-Powys border where his great grandparents were born. He'd like to give his sons the option of returning to the land when they are grown up but, knowing that the farm itself won't support them both, he uses the stream on his land to power a hydro-electric plant. That's enough to provide power for 100 houses over a year via the national grid.
The plant is small, unobtrusive, easy to maintain and provides as much income as the farm itself. Tegwyn explains to Helen that the idea of hydro-electric power is hardly a new one in this area, as his grandfather ran a similar plant in the 1930s which fell into disuse once the national grid arrived in the valley. Now, though, Tegwyn, with grant aid and technical advice from the Dyfi Eco Valley Partnership and the European Commission, is turning things round, providing the grid with power and his family with a potential future on the land
Dyfi Eco Valley Partnership
 | | Wind Power Turbines | |
Perhaps it's no coincidence that this part of Wales appears to be particularly receptive to green ideas. At Machynlleth, the Centre for Alternative Technology receives 70,000 visitors a year. Set up in the 1970s by a pioneer who saw that new green techniques were going untested, it now demonstrates the theories that many people in the area are turning into practice. Paul Allen, who's in charge of strategy at the Centre, says that, hand in hand with the grant-givers, the Centre helps make things possible and that the area has a long history of self-determination since the days of Owain Glyndwr
Centre for Alternative Technology
This same sense of doing things for themselves is present in Abergynolwyn, where Phil Potter and Royston Jones explain how the local economy can be fuelled by the trees which grow on the steep hillsides around the village. Phil, who works within the Welsh Timber Forum, is an advocate of biomass technology - in this case, burning the local wood for fuel. When plans for a new village hall were being drawn up, he suggested heating it with wood - a suggestion which grew into heating the entire village in that way. He argues that Wales' economic future could be hugely improved by using its natural resources in this way
Welsh Timber Forum
Howard Davies is one of the local people who have bought into a community wind turbine set up on the hillside overlooking the Centre for Alternative Technology, and sees it as a better investment than the building society. Admitting that green concerns came only second to the financial possibilities, he welcomes the idea of mobilising the local community towards putting money into their own pockets rather than the pockets of big business. His neighbour, Vicky Leaney, had the idea of getting the community to work together, from raising the money to painting the turbine and digging the trenches for the cables. Waiting now to be plugged into the National Grid, the turbine stands, she says, as an inspiration to people who don't believe that community action can achieve anything
Renewable Energy Investment Club
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