Mountsorrel Crags
A Dumbarton for Leicestershire.
A Dumbarton for Leicestershire.
Three crags on Castle Hill in Mountsorrel. Memorial Crag is the best, giving good quality tall problems across the grades. In summer vegetation grows up at the base of this crag so it is a good idea to take something to trim it back with. Soar Crag is shady and has several good mid-grade sit-start problems. Castle Crag gives short friendly low grade problems. These two crags do not suffer from vegetation but a stiff brush may prove useful for cleaning holds.
Mike Adams' topo can be downloaded below. More info can be found on the online version of the old Leicestershire Climbs guidebook.
| mountsorrel_mike_adams.pdf |
Parking: Park in the layby on The Navins, Mountsorrel LE12 7AB (52.728073, -1.141437).
Approach: The left end Castle Crag is visible from the parking. Memorial Crag is to the north of the memorial. Soar Crag is harder to find the first time; it can be reached from the main memorial path by a vague path cut through the bushes which runs eastwards and down hill (see red line on this map).
Approach: The left end Castle Crag is visible from the parking. Memorial Crag is to the north of the memorial. Soar Crag is harder to find the first time; it can be reached from the main memorial path by a vague path cut through the bushes which runs eastwards and down hill (see red line on this map).
In [Mountsorrel] there may be about 150 dwellings, placed on the based of the memorable rock, on which formerly stood a caste, long since destroyed... The rock looks venerable with old age; its countenance, like the human form which was once beautiful, now extended to the utmost stretch of life, commands our veneration.
The Mountsorrel Hills ... are seen as bright stars in the county, and are known almost to every traveller. They appear sketched by the same hand, penciled by the same touch, and finished by the same inimitable; artist, who formed the rocks, and has given us faculties to admire the wonders of his creative power. When the noble castle of the earls of Leicester capped the highest, how grand must have been the scene from the meadows below!
- Supplement to the Leicestershire Views, J. Throsby (1790)
The legend runs that a giant named Bel made a bet with three other giants that he would leap to Leicester in three jumps. So he mounted his sorrel (i.e. chestnut-coloured) horse here, whence the name Mountsorrel, and started off.
- Charnwood Forest and its Environs, M. P. Dare (1925)
