After a brief conversation with the foxhounds in their kennels at Trysglwyn Farm we headed off up the heather slopes to Parys Mountain, one of the high points of this island. All about us as we went up were the piled, manmade screes of copper ore waste creating an unworldly kaleidoscope of green, brown, red and gold under the pale spring sky. Though the Romans probably won the copper here it was only in the middle of the 18th century that the mining really took off and within a century it had virtually ceased.

Here on Parys Mountain (named after the 15th-century government official who was given this land for services rendered to Henry IV) a massive body of copper ore was excavated by a workforce of 1,500 when Thomas Pennant visited the area in 1778. Even then he was aware of the pollution being wrought by "suffocating fumes" and wholesale destruction of vegetation. And so it remains, so contaminated with copper and poisoned drainage is this upland mass that whole areas lie completely bare of vegetation, and the old precipitation ponds where extra copper was collected from drainage systems look dark and very uninviting.

From the sail-less windmill tower on the 480-foot top of Parys Mountain we looked out across a brighter landscape, across pastures green with new grass to the white houses of Amlwch and the blue sea beyond that. Here and there a white-sailed yacht plied parallel with Anglesey's north coast. Looking back the other way, towards the heart of the island, a very different picture presented itself.

Here, immediately to the south of Parys Mountain, is the Trysglwyn Wind Farm, where giant turbines whirr in the softest breeze to produce enough electrical power each year to supply 5,000 houses. Some may decry the sight of these pale giants but they offer a certain drama to the soft and gentle contours here, quietly turning against the broad island sky. Doing their bit to save the planet.

Over to the west as we looked out from the top of our coppery belvedere there were many more turbines turning in the breeze near Cemaes. These are really the modern counterparts of the dozens of traditional windmills that once dotted the Anglesey skyline helping to turn the corn grown here into flour, bringing wealth to the island once called "Mon, Mam Cymru" - "Anglesey, Mother of Wales".