In his 1843 book, The Wonders of the World, in Nature, Art, and Mind, Robert Sears quotes “the celebrated female writer” Mrs Radcliffe . This is what Mrs Radcliffe had to say about Castlerigg.
“Whether our judgement was influenced by the authority of a Druids choice, or that the place itself commanded the opinion, we thought this situation the most severely grand of any hitherto passed. There is, perhaps, not a single object in the scene that interrupts the solemn tone of feeling impressed by its general character of profound solitude, greatness and awful wildness. Castle-Rigg is the centre point of three valleys that dart immediately under it form the eye, an whose mountains for part of an amphitheatre, which is completed by those of Borrowdale on the west, and by the precipices of Skiddaw and Saddleback, close on the north. The hue which pervades all these mountains is that of dark heath or rock; they are thrown into every form and direction that fancy would suggest, and are at that distance which allows all their grandeur to prevail.”
“Severely grand” I’ll take a large portion of that please.