Hi Stubob, that stone has been like that since at least the 22nd June this year as far as I know. There was also evidence of a campfire and other bits of crap further down the hillside to the north so it could well have been done during that solstice weekend. I must say I’ve never been so upset when visiting a site.
I emailed the people at the tourist info centre with a forwarding letter and asked them to pass it on to the relevant organisations (as I didn’t know who to contact about the damage) and got a reply saying that it had been passed on but obviously nothing has been done about it yet.
As the paint seems to be a thick gloss it might be possible to remove it with paint stripper without damaging the stone as any kind of scraping would. Some of the other stones on the moor look like they have been daubed in the past and have been cleaned by scouring the surface which obviously takes off a layer of stone too.
Because the moor is so close to Ilkley and is popular with people from the cities all around there tends to be a lot of vandalism up there, particularly on the northern edges but seeing that stone caused me a lot of heartache and soul searching about posting information about stones on the moor – I haven’t posted any since but I may do again in the future. This sort of ties in with the other threads about the location of the Polisher stone, do you raise awareness of sites or keep them secret? I haven’t decided yet, but as Ilkley is so popular and the stones are all recorded in various places then people will find them anyway.
My only consolation is that the stones will still be there long after these fuckwits are in their graves – which I shall take great delight in pissing on and daubing with paint.

-Chris