In reply to Dave the Rave:
and anyway,why would God put all those stones near a baby cairn? everything has a purpose and the path is better when you move the rocks off it cos there's less likelihood of twisting your ankle cos your walking on the soil under where the rock used to be.
....and apparently, you're also doing your bit for nature by building them. A guy in Cotswolds told me about a website which says that 'the unique microclimate of the cairn interior helps build and sustain montane biodiversity. Paleoethnobotanical studies of major cairns indicate that early Goretex Man built cairns on the summits of Scafell Pike, Snowdon and Ben Nevis to receive votive offerings of urine. A cycle of cairn building and destruction ensued, each handling of the cairn rocks involving the transferral of a sticky nitrogen rich microfilm containing bacteria onto the hands of successive builders. These bacteria are crucial to the success of the Bananaskin Piss Fly, originally confined to just these three locations in the British isles. Their rapid spread across the major summits of the UK is in no small part due to the effects of transhumance and cairn building during the epoch of later species such as Chavus adventurus, notably the subspecies goprooakleyii'.
