https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-45146681

Get.A.Life

Beaches ‘spoiled’: Should rock stacking be banned?

Yes along with building cairns willy-nilly here and there.

Why do people think that the natural view needs to be improved?

Meh

I wonder about the people who’ll complain about it and say it spoils places, but don’t just kick the stones over.

Don’t really like the stacks that much but they’re nicer to look at than a sign saying ‘STONE STACKING PROHIBITED’ would be

I’ve kicked over a few on Chesil and enjoyed it.

Who would enforce such a ban?

What would the punishment be for those flouting it?

Who actually gives a shit? 🤷🏼‍♂️

they’re all so naff the skill is having the biggest at the top and the smallest at the bottom.

It’s art.

Only a cultural heathen would be offended.

🙂

Really struggling to care?

Give it a few months and storms will knock them all over.

Danger to wildlife? Infinitesimally small, more likely to get drowned by the big blue thing next to it.

What next, trying to ban sandcastles?

Don’t really like the stacks that much but they’re nicer to look at than a sign saying ‘STONE STACKING PROHIBITED’ would be

This a thousand times. !!

I blame Andy Goldsworthy.

I could see the point if the rocks were being removed from somewhere to be stacked but every picture there has a stack surrounded by more rocks ffs. Tide will deal with that.

Ban them, and ban sand castles, too.

How many stones would have to be on top of one another to be a stack?

It is kind worth noting that hill paths often use Cairns as waymarkers, in the article it mentions that this could confuse people…. who get’s lost on a beach though? and if you build a stone stack beside a hill path then you are also contributing to the waymarking.

The odd one is fine, but I was at Skara Brae a couple of weeks ago and pretty much the whole beach seemed to be filled with stacked rocks.

Kinda thought it spoiled the place tbh.  The odd one here and there doesn’t bother me, but when it starts looking like a city scape I think it has gone a bit far 😉

Makka Pakka can (bleep) off an’ all.

Someone has spent hours stacking stones and arranging stones into shapes on the limestone scree around south west Gower.

It it has annoyed a lot of people, including me, because unlike the dynamic environment of a storm beach, the scree has sat undisturbed for hundred if not thousands of years in the dry valleys leading down to the rocky shore.  It forms uniformly smooth slopes of bleached rubble sized angular limestone and is part of what makes the landscape special there.

Whereas as on a beach the stacked stones will be flattened by wind and waves, the shapes formed here will remain in place for years and years if nobody knocked them down.

The feel of the place been spoilt a little by the stone stacking.  It breaks the leave no trace ‘ethic’ and I feel it was a selfish endeavour.  I believe the stacker has now stopped under pressure from local people.