Don't know if it's related, but last year, on a visit to the Nine Maidens, we tried following a path, only to get scratched to bits on the undergrowth while tripping up on unseen rocks and holes.

We bumped into someone at the circle itself who told us the paths are often changed to stop erosion, etc - which I s'pose I was aware of, but didn't expect it to be so dramatically! I thought a path may have bee cut NEAR it or something, but no. No path at all was what we found.

So maybe these paths mentioned on this thread had been deliberately overgrown at each occasion.

Or it could have been the beasties..?

Who knows. Just telling you what you already know. As usual.

G x