# Earth First Summer Gathering in the UK!



## WildVirtue (Jul 25, 2022)

In a month from now I'm heading to the Earth First Summer Gathering in the South-West of England from Wednesday on the 31st of August, til Monday on the 5th of September.

There'll be tons of people offering their first hand knowledge on current campaigns. Plus lots of skills to learn and friendly debates to be had.

I'd like to increase my foraging skills, learn about updates on the situation in Northern Syria, friendly debate the application of 'tekmil' and discuss with people my work in progress biography on Ted Kaczynski to learn about more ways to help prevent people from falling into apathy, misanthropy, fatalism, etc.

They let you know on the day a suggested donation between £0-50 for between a 1-5 days stay, in order break even on bringing in all the infrastructure and doing all the organizing before hand, then it's £0-10 for healthy breakfast lunch and dinner tickets every day, but you can always bring your own food.

Finally, there's always a wide range of people who show up, so please consider coming and it'll be nice to see people 

EF! Summer Gathering 2022 – Earth First! - https://www.earthfirst.uk/ef-summer-gathering-2022/

Here's a short list of some of the workshops they have scheduled so far:

⦿ Intros

• Intro to Earth First

• Campaigns Round Up

⦿ Everyday Skills

• Plant Walk

• Trust Your Instincts Self-Defence, and Attacking the Threat

• Wildlife First Aid

⦿ Ecology

• Land Justice Network

• Revolutionary Ecology

• Total Liberation

⦿ International Solidarity

• Learning from the Kurdish Freedom Movement: Challenges of Individualism, Care and Autonomy

• Jin Jîyan Azadî – woman, life, freedom: Jineolojî and the Women’s Revolution

• Ecological Struggles in Kurdistan: Make Rojava Green Again and the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement

• 25 Years after the Zapatista Uprising

⦿ Coal

• Coal Mining in Germany

• Colonial Coal

• The Struggle Against Coal in the North East

⦿ Animal Liberation

• Learning from the past: some reflections on the animal liberation movement

• An introduction to hunt sabotage and the badger cull

• Animal Liberation Strategy

• Vegan Outreach to Animal Liberation

• Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Animal Liberation Movements

• Working Class Vegans

⦿ Civil Disobedience

• Aerial Blockading

• Lock on workshop

• Martial Arts for Peaceful Protestors: Self Defence

• Mass Action Vs Affinity Action

• Keeping Each Other Safe: A Talk About Security Culture and Affinity Group Tactics

• Direct Action Skills

• Fences: Over, Under, Through

• Lock Picking

• Night Navigation Game


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## roguetrader (Jul 26, 2022)

Cool... I'm in in the SW - Devon to be precise so I might just make it !


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## Matt Derrick (Jul 26, 2022)

roguetrader said:


> Cool... I'm in in the SW - Devon to be precise so I might just make it !



If you do, I'd love to hear how it went!


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## AestheticTramper (Aug 1, 2022)

WildVirtue said:


> In a month from now I'm heading to the Earth First Summer Gathering in the South-West of England from Wednesday on the 31st of August, til Monday on the 5th of September.
> 
> There'll be tons of people offering their first hand knowledge on current campaigns. Plus lots of skills to learn and friendly debates to be had.
> 
> ...



Where in the South-West is this?


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## roguetrader (Aug 1, 2022)

@Aesthetic voyager they aren't saying until just before the event - it's going to be on squatted land, so the location needs to be kept secret....

I really hope that the recent change in the law doesn't cause problems for this gathering - trespass is now a criminal rather than civil offence, which has major implications for all land squats and traveller sites...


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## AestheticTramper (Aug 2, 2022)

roguetrader said:


> @Aesthetic voyager they aren't saying until just before the event - it's going to be on squatted land, so the location needs to be kept secret....
> 
> I really hope that the recent change in the law doesn't cause problems for this gathering - trespass is now a criminal rather than civil offence, which has major implications for all land squats and traveller sites...



Oh when did that change take place?


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## roguetrader (Aug 2, 2022)

@Aesthetic voyager it actually became law only a few weeks ago but has been in the pipeline for 2 or 3 years... supposedly the law is designed to combat the Irish Traveller sites that spring up for a few weeks each summer - the right wing media has done a good job of demonising such people, massively exaggerating the problems they cause - so now we have a law that affects ALL travellers who squat land... 80% of the police were against the change as squatting land is now a criminal rather than civil matter...

alternative culture in the UK has been hammered by the law in the past 30 years - first we had a law that criminalised 'repetitive beats' and outlawed raves and free festivals... then a few years later squatting residential buildings was made illegal and now squatting land is illegal....


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## Andrea Van Scoyoc (Aug 5, 2022)

This sounds great! I plan to travel one day and would love to attend this if it becomes a yearly event.


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## WildVirtue (Aug 22, 2022)

Location just dropped:

Next to Old Flaxmill, Flaxdrayton Farm, South Petherton, TA13 5LR

The nearest train stations are Yeovil Junction, Crewkerne and Castle Cary.

Public transport info:

Train to Yeovil Pen Mill (on Bristol-Weymouth line) or Yeovil Junction (Waterloo-Exeter line)

Number 68 bus from both stations to Yeovil bus station (Pen Mill is also easy walking distance from bus station, Junction is 2 miles south of town), this bus is half-hourly except Sundays when it doesn’t run

Number 81 bus from Yeovil bus station to Norton-sub-Hamden, closest village to site (1 mile), runs hourly weekdays, 2-hourly Saturdays, not at all Sundays.

Berrys Coaches run a service (SuperFast 2) from London to Taunton serving South Petherton, this has to be booked (and this does run Sundays). You could then get the 68 bus from South Petherton to Norton, or just walk it.

National Express in theory have a coach stop in Yeovil, but don’t seem to be running anything there at present.

Here's the liftshare telegram chat: 






Earth First TRANSPORT (lift sharing)


Closest train stations Yeovil junction 20mins .Crewkerne 20mins . Castle Cary 25mins.




t.me





I found a £30 train ticket from 200 miles away on https://nationalrail.co.uk , but I might hitch it, haven't decided yet. 

Finally, you can get in touch to ask any questions via [email protected].

---

Local bus times:

Here is the timetable for the 81 bus:



https://images.southwestcoaches.co.uk/images/pdfs/81service-public-sept2020.pdf



Also Yeovil stations to bus station:



http://wyndham.gettingaroundsomerset.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Service-68-June-2018-Bus-Timetable.pdf



---

Looks like it's not on squatted land anymore, so there's no chance of getting evicted half way through, but yeah I think it was going to be the start of an attempt to stop a roadbuilding scheme:






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## packpossum (Aug 22, 2022)

this sounds awesome, would love to go but unfortunately i'll be working (i volunteer at a wildlife rescue, so actually important work lol) hopefully i'll be able to attend next yr!


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## roguetrader (Aug 29, 2022)

did you make it @WildVirtue ?


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## WildVirtue (Aug 29, 2022)

roguetrader said:


> did you make it @WildVirtue ?



I should be there Wednesday morning, I bought the cheapest train ticket I could find, but it means I get into Yeovil at 10 pm on Tuesday, so I will likely sleep in the woods and hitch in the morning.

Yourself?


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## roguetrader (Aug 30, 2022)

I won't be going @WildVirtue - we have been given notice to move from our long term park up unexpectedly, so I've got to concentrate on that.... 

shame coz I'd like to meet a few more STP users - so far I've only seen one in the flesh / meatspace....


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