Welsh Windy Miller

MOELFRE Some 300 feet further up the mountain where Mum was born, Moelfre now hosts three giant windmills of the controversial blot-on-the landscape/save-the-world debate. No-nonsense, noiseless turbines that dominate the landscape. Uncle Lyn hates them, says they're in the wrong place. I like them - I gasped when I turned the corner and saw them in front of me.


Guto, 40, of Blaenbowi pulls up in his motor as I look at Glynpurffaith - now Glyn y Mel - from the road above Capel Iwan.

"They went up in 2001. I went to the Royal Welsh Show in about 98 and left my details. From working on Moelfre with my dad I knew the strength of the wind - nothing like down here. So why not make some money from the field?

"Two years later a company from North Wales got back to me and they did the planning permission and all the details - I wouldn't have been able to do all of that. They create enough power for 2,500 homes for a year. In China now they're opening two coal mines a week or something so this sort of thing has to be looked at."

Guto farms 250 acres on the mountain - sheep and beef. "If it wasn't for subsidy we wouldn't make any money though. I remember your grandfather - he used to have a big American car." Lyn says it was a Humber Hawk but granddad had the shell of a Buick on the farm.

"Your granddad saved my grandfather's life. There as a water wheel down below the farm and one of the cogs caught on his clothing and dragged him into the wheel. It pierced his belly and he was stuck'

"Tom heard his cries, came down to the wheel and then was strong enough to push the wheel against the flow of the water, just enough so my granddad could free himself. Grandfather had to go back to the farm holding his intestines in and we had to ring for the doctor who cleaned him and sewed him backup. No trip to hospital for him in those days (I imagine this was in the 20s or 30s) - he had to stay in bed for a bit and then get back to work."