England · Lake District National Park

Castle Crag

WainwrightSyngeFellranger

2 classifications here — Synge and Fellranger — belong to lists OpenFell holds only part of, so they have no list page. See how far the coverage goes.

Castle Crag, 290 m, Cumberland
Castle Crag, 290 m, Cumberland. Photo by Stephen Horncastle, CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Height
290 m · 951 ft
Grid reference
NY 24932 15942
Coordinates
54.53318, -3.16161
County / area
Cumberland
OS Landranger
89 90
OS Explorer
OL4S
Summit feature
large shelter cairn on rock
Key col
NY246156 (214 m)

About Castle Crag

Castle Crag has a distinction no other fell can claim: it is the smallest hill in Alfred Wainwright's Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, and the only Wainwright standing below 1,000 feet. At 290 metres it sits among the North Western Fells, and also appears on the Synge and Fellranger lists.

Background written from facts in the Wikipedia article on Castle Crag (CC BY-SA 4.0). Heights, prominence and grid references come from the Database of British & Irish Hills, not from Wikipedia.

Access rights here

Conditional Right to roam: Right to roam only on mapped CRoW open access land.

Permission needed Wild camping: Needs the landowner's permission — the Dartmoor commons are the only exception in England.

General position for England — local byelaws, seasonal restrictions and closures can override it. Full details: access rights in England · check another location.

Daylight at this summit today

Sunrise
Sunset
Daylight
Civil twilight ends

Computed astronomically for 54.533, -3.162. Plan your finish with the daylight safety planner.

Summit weather live

Loading forecast for the summit (290 m)…

Forecast adjusted to summit altitude. Weather data from MET Norway (CC BY 4.0).

Finding the summit

The recorded summit point is large shelter cairn on rock. On broad or flat summits the obvious cairn is not always the true high point.

Survey method
obvious summit
Record revised
25-Jan-24
Drop measured from
NY246156 · 214 m

Survey notes are field observations recorded in the Database of British & Irish Hills (v18.3, CC BY 4.0) by the hill-surveying community.

Long-distance paths past this hill

One waymarked long-distance route runs within 2.5 km of the summit — useful if you are linking this hill into a longer walk, or want a made path for the approach.

RouteTotal lengthFrom summit
Cumbria Way 119 km over the top

Route lines © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL); distance from the summit computed by OpenFell.

Which hill this one belongs to

Castle Crag is not counted as an independent hill in its own right. In prominence terms it belongs to Dale Head (754 m) — the nearest Marilyn you can reach from this summit without first dropping below its key col, 214 m.

Grouping is by prominence alone: a summit belongs to the nearest higher Marilyn it connects to without a deeper intervening col. Over a large massif that can gather hills no one would walk in a single day, and which few would describe as parts of the same mountain — it is a measure of independence, not a suggested route.

Nearest listed peaks

PeakHeightDistance
High Spy 653.1 m 1.5 km
Grange Fell 417.2 m 1.6 km
High Spy North Top 634 m 1.7 km
Great Crag (Stonethwaite) 449 m 2.4 km
Maiden Moor 575 m 2.6 km
Dale Head 754 m 2.7 km