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About the Author

Born into a Lancashire mining family, I was destined for employment with the National Coal Board, but ‘escaped’ by securing a job in the Town Clerk’s office in St Helens. Rising to become Deputy Town Clerk in Bangor, North Wales, and then Leigh in Lancashire, I spent thirty years in the cloisters of local government. Much of it, looking back, was professionally enjoyable, but compared with what I do now, it was like a very long prison sentence for a crime I hadn’t committed.

My interest in Snowdonia began in 1970 when I moved to live and work in Bangor. With the Carneddau in view from my living room window, and far too much of a temptation to resist, I soon became a voluntary warden in the Snowdonia National Park. It was here in Snowdonia that I learned and then honed the crafts and skills of hillwalking, building a foundation of experience on which my career (and survival) has rested. My first book was The Summits of Snowdonia, published in 1984, which was followed a year later by The Mountains of Wales, which took me a little further afield.

These days, based back in Lancashire, I am a full-time writer and photographer specialising in the outdoors and travel in the UK, Australia, Ireland, France, Madeira and the Azores, which is quite enough to be going on with. I like to get into the culture of the countries I visit, and when I’m walking and writing new guidebooks, the history of the place and its people are important facets, helping me to understand how landscapes were shaped by man, as well as geologically. Never having had the chance to go to university – in the early 1960s, that wasn’t for miners’ sons – I am also proud to have obtained a Masters Degree with Distinction in Lake District Studies from the University of Lancaster.

Now, almost 40 years since those first faltering steps on Welsh rock, I have been fortunate to be able to return to walk the mountains and valleys of North Wales anew, seeing them with more experienced eyes, and understanding, as much as any Englishman can, the role they have played in the lives and culture of the Welsh people.

Terry Marsh, 2010