Castle Crag

Castle Crag is a hill in the North Western Fells of the English Lake District. It is the smallest hill included in Alfred Wainwright's influential Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, the only Wainwright below 1,000 feet (300 m).

Wainwright accorded Castle Crag the status of a separate fell because it "is so magnificently independent, so ruggedly individual, so aggressively unashamed of its lack of inches, that less than justice would be done by relegating it to a paragraph in the High Spy chapter." Subsequent guidebooks have not always agreed: Castle Crag is one of only two Wainwrights not included in Bill Birkett's Complete Lakeland Fells.

The summit area is believed to have been an ancient hill fort, although the western section has been sliced away by quarrying. It can only be gained by means of a sloping crack to the south. The very highest point is a rock outcrop about eight feet high and twelve feet across. Atop this is a well constructed circular cairn of slate. A memorial to Borrowdale men killed in World War I is affixed to the outcrop.

There is a fine view down the valley, Skiddaw seen to good effect across the lake. Southwards Great Gable and the Scafells ring the head of the Derwent catchment, while near at hand - enhanced by the steepness of the slope - is a view of the woods and crags of mid Borrowdale.