Author: earthfirst

EF! Summer Gathering 2022

Prac­ti­cal info
Overview info
Anti-oppres­sion
Kids Space
 
 
 
Loca­tion infor­ma­tion:
 
Bridge Farm, next to Old Flaxmill, Flax­dray­ton Farm, South Pether­ton, TA13 5LR
 
https://maps.app.goo.gl/D1k9b24QXwAmKFLb9
 
The near­est train sta­tions are Yeovil Junc­tion, Crewk­erne and Cas­tle Cary. (Check for bus replace­ment on Sun­day if you’re bring­ing a bike)
 
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.

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

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.

Please send a mes­sage to our site phone (07706 017355, after 5pm on 29th August) if you need a lift — there will be irreg­u­lar shut­tles from Crewk­erne sta­tion. Make sure to let us know plen­ty in advance (day before arrival ide­al­ly) so that we can make this hap­pen!

Bus times:

Hel­lo, 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

 
Call­ing all defend­ers of the wild! You are warm­ly invit­ed to five days of work­shops, skill shares, plot­ting and plan­ning, sol­i­dar­i­ty and social­is­ing in a beau­ti­ful camp out. This year’s Earth First! Sum­mer gath­er­ing will be from Wednes­day 31st August till Mon­day 5th Sep­tem­ber and will host a nation-wide and inter­na­tion­al cam­paigns roundup, work­shops on organ­is­ing secure­ly, facil­i­ta­tion and prac­ti­cal Direct Action skills, avoid­ing burnout and more. The gath­er­ing is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet like-mind­ed peo­ple and form con­nec­tions with oth­ers fight­ing the good fight up and down the British Isles and beyond. So come along!
 
VENUE: near­est train sta­tions are Yeovil Junc­tion, Crewk­erne and Cas­tle Cary. You can get in touch via earthfirstuk@riseup.net.

 

  • www.earthfirst.uk
  • twitter.com/earthfirst_uk
  • FB: Earth­First UK
  • Ins­ta: Earth.FirstUK
What to bring: tent, sleep­ing bag+mat, cup, plate and cut­lery. Cash for cake and dona­tions. Your friends and com­rades. More info here.

What to expect when you arrive

A wel­come tent with peo­ple in to give you a warm wel­come and tell you about the site, where the loos are, where to camp, things you can get involved with straight away, and take dona­tions for the cost of the camp (£0–50), and the meals each day (£0–10/day). Depend­ing on how ear­ly you arrive, mar­quees will be ris­ing or risen for work­shop spaces, peo­ple will by scur­ry­ing about on mis­sions to build or clean com­post toi­lets, find that ham­mer that dis­ap­peared, paint­ing signs, chop­ping veg­eta­bles for the next meal, whis­per-plan­ning a secre­tive action, hav­ing loud polit­i­cal debates with some­one they’ve just met… or hav­ing some qui­et time with a book in a cor­ner of some mar­quee. No one is in charge. We are all crew here, putting col­lec­tive liv­ing into prac­tice, cre­at­ing a tiny tran­sient vision of the world we want to cre­ate and defend. The more you par­tic­i­pate in this camp, the more you will get out of it.

Get in touch

The site phone will be on from Mon­day 29th, 5pm: 07706 017355

Community and eco-anarchism

At this gath­er­ing we are work­ing towards a dif­fer­ent kind of liv­ing-togeth­er in nature – non-hier­ar­chi­cal­ly, low-impact and in sol­i­dar­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty. We want to chal­lenge the mul­ti­ple sys­tems of oppres­sion – patri­archy, white suprema­cy, trans­pho­bia, ableism, speciesism and oth­ers – and work towards new rela­tion­ships with the earth, non­hu­man nature and one anoth­er.

By demon­strat­ing green/e­co-anar­chist ways of organ­is­ing and liv­ing in order to con­front, halt and reverse eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion, we can build a cul­ture of active, non-hier­ar­chi­cal, grass­roots eco­log­i­cal resis­tance. EF! and Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Gath­er­ings pro­vides a plat­form for shar­ing infor­ma­tion, prac­ti­cal direct action and cam­paign­ing skills. In the next few days, we are also prac­tis­ing the kinds of skills that you may need when occu­py­ing land to defend the earth, and our­selves, against the kind of so-called devel­op­ment that involves extract­ing resources from the earth, cut­ting trees, con­struct­ing dams, killing non-human ani­mals, or build­ing large infra­struc­ture projects in the name of moder­ni­ty or progress. This involves keep­ing the site safe from the police by run­ning effec­tive gate pro­tec­tion, organ­is­ing kids’ spaces, mak­ing sure we are all fed healthy veg­an food, and learn­ing from each oth­er.

Roll Back The Tracks Bike Ride

What do you need to bring?

– bicy­cle 🙂
– bicy­cle pan­niers
– tent, sleep­ing mat and sleep­ing bag
– headlamp/flashlight
– pow­er bank for charg­ing elec­tron­ics
– bot­tles for car­ry­ing drink­ing water
– a seal­able tup­per­ware for car­ry­ing food and eat­ing out of, mug and cut­lery
– toi­letries and med­ica­tion
– clothes to stay warm and dry
– first aid kit
– a basic cycle repair kit if you have one
– ban­ners and flags to attach to your bike! (no XR ban­ners please)
– cash for dona­tions for food.
We are look­ing into con­tin­u­ing the bike ride along the sec­ond leg of the pro­posed route from Birm­ing­ham to Leeds from the 20th to rough­ly the 27th of August. For this leg, you will also need:
— camp­ing stove & gas
— cook­ing equip­ment

Camping Sites

We have tried where pos­si­ble to get per­mis­sion to use camp­ing sites. How­ev­er, in some places we will be tres­pass­ing, and as such, facil­i­ties will be min­i­mal. We have select­ed places that we feel are suit­able to camp for the nights of the 15th-19th.
On the night of the 20th, we will be wild camp­ing in a park in Brum cen­tre, and from then on, wild camp­ing in loca­tions that we have not yet vis­it­ed, and there­fore we can’t guar­an­tee they will be bril­liant places to camp.

Food & water

On the first leg of the ride from Man­ches­ter to Birm­ing­ham, we will have a cater­ing team fol­low­ing us in a vehi­cle. With vol­un­teer sup­port from us, they will pro­vide one cooked, veg­an, evening meal each day, and pro­vide the ingre­di­ents for us to make our own break­fast and packed lunch­es.
Vol­un­teers in the kitchen will need to wear a face mask and observe phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing.
Dona­tions for food are great­ly appre­ci­at­ed, though no-one will be turned away for lack of funds.
On the sec­ond leg, we will NOT be catered for, so if you are cycling from Brum to Leeds, you will need to buy your own food and cook for your­self.
Most of the camp­ing sites have run­ning water near­by. How­ev­er, you need to have at least 2 1L drink­ing bot­tles with you on the ride, and to fill them up when­ev­er pos­si­ble on route to camp­sites. Stay hydrat­ed!

Toilets

At some of the camp­sites, there are toi­lets. Where there are not toi­lets, we will have a bike trail­er toi­let cubi­cle in tow, and a spade. Col­lec­tive­ly, we will have to dig a pit for every­one to poo in. If the idea of poop­ing in a pit gross­es you out, then make sure you use pub­lic toi­lets on route.

Checking your bike is ready to join Roll Back the Tracks

Lots of dif­fer­ent bikes can make this trip, but it needs to be in good work­ing order.

Please make sure you have at least one water bot­tle hold­er on your bike. You also need to think about how you will car­ry your lug­gage. You need either a pan­nier rack bolt­ed to your bike frame to car­ry pan­nier bags with your belong­ings, or you’ll need to bring bike pack­ing bags to car­ry lug­gage direct­ly on the frame. Please don’t come with a back­pack of all your stuff, you will be sweaty and uncom­fort­able quick­ly. Full sus­pen­sion moun­tain bikes are not rec­om­mend­ed.

If you don’t cycle reg­u­lar­ly, or you are bor­row­ing a bike for the trip check that the bike fits – take it for a test ride of a few hours to see how com­fort­able it is. You need to be able to stand over the frame with­out it touch­ing you between your legs and be able to com­fort­able reach the han­dle­bars and brakes.

Check your brakes

Rim brakes (the brakes act on the metal circular part of your wheel)

• pull on the brakes one at a time to ensure that they can stop the bike
• check there is plen­ty of rub­ber across the whole of all the pads (espe­cial­ly if your brakes are noisy)
• check that the brakes just touch onto met­al and not onto the rub­ber of the tyre
• check that when you pull the brake lever (the part in your hand when rid­ing) the lever does­n’t touch the han­dle­bars.

Disk brakes

• Check that the front and the back brake stops your bike (rather than when both are pressed at the same time).
• Check the rotary wheel is straight and firm­ly attached.
• If the brakes are ring­ing you need to get them adjust­ed.

Wheels

• Check that quick release wheels are prop­er­ly tight­ened. You should be able to read the word ‘closed’ when they are;
• oth­er­wise, check that wheel nuts are tight, espe­cial­ly if you remove your front wheel.
• Clean the brak­ing sur­face if you have rim brakes – use wash­ing up liq­uid in water and a rag.
• Check the tyres are ful­ly inflat­ed. The pres­sure is writ­ten on the side of your tyre.
• Check the tyres still have a pat­tern across the sur­face and do not bulge.
• Check that the brakes haven’t rubbed a grove in the rub­ber of the tyre.
• Check that the wheel runs in a straight line – do this by lift­ing one end of your bike and push­ing the wheel round fast, it should move smooth­ly and not rub.
• Look at your wheels to ensure all the spokes are there and squeeze them in pairs to check they are of a sim­i­lar tight­ness.

Frame

• Make sure there are no cracks or big dents in the frame.
• Check the bolts attach­ing mud guards, water bot­tles and the pan­nier rack are all tight.
• Can you move the han­dle­bars flu­id­ly?
• Could they be too loose? Put the front brake on, turn the front wheel 90 degrees and then see if the front of the bike rocks if you push for­ward on the turned han­dle­bar. If so, it needs tight­ened.

Gears

• Look at your chain and every­thing it touch­es. Dirty? It real­ly is worth­while using an old tooth brush to clean each link and con­tact point before re-apply­ing oil to each link and then remov­ing any excess with a rag.
• Move the ped­als and ensure they can freely turn round com­plete­ly.
• Check that the bike can go into all of its gears. There are going to be hills, so you’ll need a range of gears.

Got a creaking bike?

Can you work out where it is com­ing from? If stand­ing up to ped­al makes it stop check your sad­dle, if it is worse when you ped­dle hard it is like­ly your bot­tom brack­et.

Got a prob­lem with one or more of these areas? If yo don’t know how to fix it find a friend who does or take it to an inde­pen­dent bike shop – but watch out they may not be able to do this at short notice.

Please bring a spare inner tube with you in case you get a punc­ture, the size is writ­ten on the side of your tyre. If you don’t know how to change a flat tyre still bring a spare inner tube and we can fix it togeth­er.

Hav­ing a ful­ly work­ing bike is your respon­si­bil­i­ty.
We are meet­ing togeth­er on the 14th at Rye­bank Fields Protest Camp in Man­ches­ter to check bikes. Please bring a bike which is in full work­ing order as we may sad­ly have to ask you not to come if you’re bike isn’t up to the job and we can’t get parts to fix it.

How can you help?

• Know of any­where we (max 50 rid­ers) could sleep in the fol­low­ing areas?
◦ North Cheshire
◦ Birm­ing­ham Cen­tre (ide­al­ly near Dig­beth)
◦ West Leices­ter­shire
◦ Sheffield
◦ Leeds
• Involved in a crit­i­cal Mass or cycling group in Brum, Not­ting­ham, Sheffield or Leeds? Help us organ­ise some cyclists into a crit­i­cal mass!
• Have you got a bike sound sys­tem you could bring on part of the ride?
• Do a work­shop on route. Sing a song round the camp­fire.
• Get cre­ative and make some flags or ban­ners for our bikes!
• Vol­un­teer in the kitchen.
• Tow the bike trail­er toi­let for a few hours.
• Spare some change? We are try­ing to raise 2000 pounds to fund the project. can you help either by donat­ing or shar­ing? Here´s the link to the crowd­fun­der:
https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/roll-back-the-tracks

Drop us an email on rollbackthetracks@riseup.net to RSVP or for more info.