Day 23 of the Balcombe Blockade and Day 1 of the Reclaim the Power camp.
Reclaim the Power descended on a site just over a mile south of the drilling rig at 6pm last night. Despite a brief bit of argy-bargy with some local farm boys the site was successfully squatted and by this afternoon was on it's way to becoming a fully fledged eco-village and base of operations.
The mere threat of a thousand activists arriving on site was enough to cause Cuadrilla to suspend drilling for the week. The site has been fortified in preparation with razor wire and an extra ring of fencing. With all the mad, bad and weird folk on the outside preparing to break in it bears an uncanny resemblance to that other great festival of British eccentricity – Glastonbury. The energy exploration company is already making noises about pulling out of Balcombe.
The pace at the gate to the site hasn't slackened either with the original single gazebo of three weeks ago having been supplanted by an ever expanding roadside camp that now stretches for a couple of hundred metres on either side of the verge. More daring types have moved onto the land immediately next to the rig and the first tree houses are going up.
Get yourselves down to Balcombe for what is sure to be a fine weekend!
Previous SchNEWS stories on Balcombe