Rural North Wales is mainly mountain, hill, valley and water embroidered with roadways miraculously just wide enough for two cars to pass each other if their drivers hold their breaths in the process. Foot and mouth has turned it into a restless wasteland. Residents and visitors alike may drive but not get out of their cars. Lay-bys and parking areas are cordoned off with orange cones and police tape. The feeling of pending doom is sealed with small white signs in two languages warning of foot and mouth. 

On the A498 one farm has already put out a red lettered sign of contamination, perhaps in hopes of keeping even the boldest literate human interloper off of the land, and so, perhaps, preserving their animals. 

Every person I’ve spoken to about it is sickened by the slaughter, fearful of the nightmare spring in which the sweetly comical sound of a ewe calling to her lamb is silenced by horrific methods.

I learn from a local animal supporter that dogs in shelters were in danger of being killed just a week ago. Instead, now a slippery rule applies only to strays that are not claimed by their owners within seven days. Adoptions have been halted. A local man tells me that a month before the first case of foot and mouth was diagnosed lumber yards had received calls from the ministry of agriculture asking whether they would have available wood for mass burnings. This fact fits neatly into place with information I received in London from an investigative journalist who feels foot and mouth is just a smoke screen and that the real reason for the holocaust is to halt BSE.

While it is true that many attractions in North Wales that were initially closed to guard against the spread of the virus will now be open to guard against the loss of tourist spending, it appears certain that the soul reviving spots of natural beauty will remain out of bounds for an undetermined length of time. According to the latest official information, foot and mouth disease is expected to peak only in August. I doubt very much that visitors will be interested in going to any place that may be downwind of the smoke from funeral pyres. For while there is currently a notion toward using vaccinations to battle the disease, the slaughter will go on because vaccinated animals cannot be distinguished from those which already have the disease and, therefore, are unmarketable.

A practical word of caution for visitors who will be traveling to the UK in the next few months: at Heathrow departures we were told that when we arrive in the US we will be asked if we visited any farms or carried with us any meat or dairy products.  At JFK arrivals the question was expanded to include hiking and visits to B&Bs whilst in the UK.