IOLO'S PROFILE

Iolo was born in Builth Wells, in mid-Wales. He moved with his family to the village of Eglwys Wen in Pembrokeshire when he was three months old, but then they returned to mid-Wales when he was five, to Llanwddyn, by the shores of Lake Vyrnwy. He went to Primary School in Llanwddyn and Secondary School in Llanfyllin, ten miles away. He didn't enjoy secondary school, and considered leaving in order to join the army.

He left with two A-Levels, in Biology and French, and admits that he did poorly: "I was better at languages than anything else. I just picked up languages immediately. But everything else I had to work hard on. I hated maths, I hated chemistry and physics. I hated all that lot with a passion. So I dropped those immediately. But I carried on with languages, Spanish, English, Welsh, and French, and then to A-level where I only did two."

Iolo went to college in London and did a degree in Ecology which he describes as "Fantastic. It was like a hobby. And that's how I got into the wildlife business in many ways."

After leaving college Iolo first worked on a farm for eight months before moving on to work in forestry "as a kind of lumberjack". His career in conservation started when he began working for the RSPB in the mid-1980s, a job which he loved doing for almost 15 years.

While working for the RSPB he contributed to various television and radio programmes, often talking about the unusual and rare birds top be found in Wales. He was one of the characters featured on a BBC 2 series called 'Visions of Snowdonia', and then presented a series following his work called 'Birdman'. Eventually Iolo left the RSPB and moved full-time into the media, appearing on a number of wildlife series on S4C as well as various projects for BBC Wales.

He describes his work as "Fantastic - I'm being paid to do my hobby. It's given me the opportunity to travel to exotic places around the globe, such as India, Australia, Northern Canada and the island of South Georgia."

This current series is the sixth time for Iolo to pull on his walking boots for "Crwydro". He says "It's great to meet such a wide range of interesting people, and to visit all four corners of Wales and enjoy the fresh air and the marvellous, diverse scenery".

He and his wife Ceri have two sons - Dewi and Tomos - and two dogs - Ianto and Gwen. They live in Powys, near the town of Newtown, and not far from where he grew up.