How Moel Famau became Scouse Mountain

On a bright Saturday morning in mid-October, one of those days when the smell of autumn is in the air but the last few rays of the summer sun are still breaking through, financial auditor Will Tait is chatting to his flatmate about their plans for the day.

Will doesn’t even need to explain. He just points in the distance from the window of his city-centre flat: “There.”

“There” is Moel Famau, the vague squiggly outline of which, on clear days like this, you can see from Will’s flat and other Liverpool vantage points. The hill is close enough to the city to serve as its playground and earn it the moniker Scouse Mountain — even though it’s in Wales, on the Clwydian Range between Mold and Ruthin.

Summiting Moel Famau (pronounced Mo-elle Vam-eye, meaning “The Bare Hill of the Mothers”) has become something of a ritual for the city’s residents. It makes sense: this is technically the closest big hill to central Liverpool, only 25 miles away. Its proximity is reflected in the name of an inconspicuous cul-de-sac in L17, Moel Famau View; stand on the top of the hill and you can often spot the red cranes of Liverpool’s port and the needle of St John’s Beacon. 

Despite the nickname, Moel Famau is a hill, coming some 200ft below the widely recognised 2,000ft threshold to being a mountain. A scan of social media shows just how popular it is, and just how many of the visitors are from Merseyside. One Instagram user, taking creative liberties to the next level, calls it “the Scouse Matterhorn”.

Visiting here on the weekend is a way of cancelling out the sins of the previous evening — “have a nice night on the Friday, come here on the Saturday,” as Will describes it to me not long after reaching the strange stump of the Jubilee Tower at the summit. But its busyness is also in keeping with the post-pandemic appreciation of the outdoors in the UK. And if you get to post about it on Instagram? Well, it’s a win-win.

However, with growing popularity — Denbighshire County Council estimates 300,000 people visit Moel Famau every year — comes growing concern. Because they make up a good percentage of visitors here, Scousers (rightly or wrongly) embody the idea that it is becoming overrun, and increasingly littered with Starbucks cups and dog poo bags.

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First things first: I should probably declare an interest here.

I grew up some 20 miles north in Prestatyn and my family comes from the Vale of Clwyd villages you can glimpse to the west of Moel Famau’s summit. Weekends as a kid would involve either walking on the Clwydians or dropping my dad off there so he could run all the way back down again. But it’s no more my mountain than it is anyone else’s, even if I hold a particular affection for this glorious bit of heathery hillside.

There’s no question it has gotten busier here, though. Back in the day, there might have been a handful of cars parked up at Bwlch Pen Barras, the primary spot to start the winding journey up to the summit. Now, even on an overcast day you can expect it, and the nearby spillover car park, to be chock-a-block. Focus on the dealers’ plates and the accents of the passengers, and you’ll quickly work out where many of the walkers are from. None of your hardy country dogs here, either: this is Cockapoo Central.

When Dave Chandler would take the bus to school in Elton, near Ellesmere Port, he would always look out for Moel Famau in the distance. In winter, he would admire the snow on the hilltop and know that’s where he wanted to be.

As an adult, he moved to Gwyddelwern, near Corwen, to give him even better access to the hills. He estimates he walked up Moel Famau a few times a week for almost 20 years and says he once knew the journey from the car park to the top so well, he tried a few times to walk the path with his eyes closed, unsuccessfully.

But over the past few years, something changed. “When I used to go up late in the evening I’d be pretty much guaranteed to have the place to myself, but that isn’t the case now,” Dave, a neuroscience researcher who is now 50, says. And more visitors equals more litter. “I’ve seen nappies left at the summit, which is gross, and even more disgusting is the truly bizarre habit of hanging dog poo bags in trees — you’ve got to be a special type of weirdo to want to do that.”

It’s not just dog poo, either. “On my last walk up there earlier this year I encountered a group of young adults discussing which part of the Jubilee Tower to defecate on, despite being surrounded by miles of countryside full of bushes,” Dave adds. He and they shared what Dave politely calls “a frank exchange of words”.