WALKING enthusiasts learned about the landscape of a famous Welsh author.

During the annual Daniel Owen Festival a number of well-attended guided walks introduced people to places associated with the famous Victorian author, who lived and worked in Mold.

Landscapes described in Daniel Owen’s novels featured in two of the walks in the countryside around the town.

Archaeologist Fiona Gale accompanied participants on Nercwys Mountain, which was arranged by Walkabout Flintshire.

She explained the significance of the changing landscape – unlocking how the land would have been used by people over millennia in this fascinating upland area.

Nercwys Mountain is one of the contenders as the site of the villainous Captain Trefor’s lead mining scam in Daniel Owen’s novel Enoc Hughes.

At the high view points on the walk, historian and chairman of the Daniel Owen Festival, Kevin Matthias, pointed out how some of the field boundaries still relate to the acts of enclosures in the 18th century.

By fencing land off it removed the right of commoners’ access to graze their sheep and raise crops.

Land owners who already had most land were given the largest shares of the newly enclosed land, causing poverty in communities and forcing many poor people to move to urban areas in search of work.

Place names in the area give us a clue to the land use and history of the times.

A guided four mile walk and talk was also arranged to take place around the non-conformist chapels in the Pantymwyn and Gwernaffield area and the workplaces of the people they served, organised by the Friends of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley.

The chapels were built to serve the population boosted by the booming mining and quarrying industries of the 19th century.