About 50 of us gathered together last weekend and on Monday 9'th Dec 2002 to commemorate the 10'th anniversary of Yellow Wednesday at Twyford Down in Hampshire.

For those with faded memories or those not old enough to remember, the violent, early morning eviction of the Dongas tribe's original protest camp on Twyford Down by a flourescent yellow clad army of Group 4 thugs was the initial spark that ignited the whole 1990's direct action roads protest movement. The final tarmac link to complete the M3 near Winchester destroyed an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and two Scheduled Ancient Monuments. One of these ancient monuments was the Dongas, narrow parallel trackways worn into the landscape over centuries by the passing feet of drovers and their herds travelling to Winchester. By contrast the savagely deep motorway cutting that sliced right through the white chalk of Twyford Down was completed by Tarmac destruction in just two years.

I could only stay until Sunday so rather than showing groups of people with long faces surveying the destroyed landscape, most of my photos show people gathered around the camp site in the beech grove and hill fort on top of St Catherine's hill. During the weekend a kitchen was established and two heated benders were erected. We were entertained by live music, fire-eaters and tattered but very nostalgic albums of press cuttings from the protest. Two very nice police constables climbed the hill several times during the weekend to ask us if we were ok and telling us to call them out if we received any hassle at all from anyone. Such a contrast from 10 years ago. We returned home muddy and smelling nicely of wood smoke. That's one feature of camp life that will never change.