Geograph - photograph every grid square

(Or "the Lang Craigs". My own experience has been that, locally, "the Long Crags" is now the more common spoken form, while "the Lang Craigs" is a little more common in print. In cases like this, I tend to use the more common spoken form, but the names are interchangeable.)

This photo was taken near a spring whose stream gives rise to some waterfalls (see NS4376 : Small waterfalls at the top of the Long Crags). This location provided a good view northwards along a section of these cliffs. The whole of the extensive range of cliffs here is known as the Lang Craigs; they are part of the edge of the Kilpatrick Hills.

For an earlier view of the cliffs by another contributor, see NS4376 : Lang Craigs. See NS4376 : The Long Crags for a view from the lower ground nearby.

The plateau of the Kilpatrick Hills had its origin in the Carboniferous Period; regarding that period, the book "Wildlife Around Glasgow" (Richard Sutcliffe, 2010) says: "volcanic activity was widespread. Around 340 million years ago volcanoes spewed out lava across the landscape of the Glasgow area. Over millions of years there were many eruptions, mainly of basalt lava. Individual flows built up into a pile nearly 1 km thick at its maximum. These lavas, known as the Clyde Plateau Volcanic Formation, now form the high ground around Glasgow – the Campsie Fells and Kilpatrick Hills to the north and uplands including the Renfrewshire hills and Eaglesham Moor south of the Clyde".

The lands of Meikle Overtoun (in this general area) were, in the early nineteenth century, owned by a certain Mr Lang, but the name "Lang Craigs" is not derived from that family's surname; instead, the actual meaning of the name is made clear by an earlier map, Roy's Military Survey of Scotland (1740s-50s), which labels the cliffs "Long Craig".