Carneddau Ponies

At the end of March this year, this area of North Wales was hit by a dreadful snow storm, with bitterly cold wind, and deep drifts. The farmers were taken completely by surprise and many sheep and lambs were lost. So too the mountain ponies of the Carneddau. Of the two hundred ponies plus newly born foals, half were lost, many freezing to death as they stood, or buried deep in the drifts by the walls. That is one hundred ponies that died over the course of three or four days. The burial of the corpses took several weeks as the snow took long to clear on the higher hills.

This weekend is the annual gathering of the mountain ponies. They are brought down from the hills to a local farm where they are checked over before being released back again onto the mountains.