Meet The Author - Julie Brominicks

Cader Idris the mountain in southern Eryri, is rich in lore and natural history.

Julie Brominicks spent a year getting to know the mountain, in storms, snow, rain and scorching sun, and scoured the archives to unearth stories from the past - about eccentric 19th-century guides, Harry Jones who served tea and cake on the summit between the wars, and the fizzy drinks plant that bottled water at its foot.

But mostly she collected stories from the people who know the mountain today - jet spotters, a paraglider, an archaeologist, geologist, lichenologist, a Christmas tree grower, fell runners, Mountain Rescuers, shepherds, harpists, hikers, peace activists and so many more. She helped farmers gather sheep, searched for euphrasia cambrica with botanists, merlins and ring ouzels with an ornithologist, and helped build a drystone wall.

Cader Idris; Let the Mountain Speak, is a biography of a mountain in all its bare, brittle beauty, interwoven with the stories of the people that love it best.

Julie Brominicks is the author of Cader Idris (Seren Books 2026) and The Edge of Cymru (Seren Books 2022), and frequently contributes to Nation.Cymru and BBC Countryfile Magazine. Her writing (and travelling, which is car-free and flightless) is informed by her career in sustainability education, which she quit in order to write, and her subjects are the landscape, people, wildlife, culture and languages she encounters on the road. As a Welsh learner she champions Cymru, Cymraeg and cymreictod.