Climate Camp 2

I went up to Blackheath today to have a mooch around the Climate Camp. After all, I've been suffering the police helicopters circling round in case they could spot something to use as an excuse to cause trouble, so I might as well experience some of the good stuff, too.

This is the camp as I walked across the heath from the direction of the village (yes, London has a lot of villages swallowed up within it, and most still bear the name). It doesn't look all that big, but an aerial photo would reveal that it's quite extensive.

There are large tents and marquees with lots of meetings and workshops going on in them. Topics include economics, heatwaves and health, legal help, and the forthcoming Copenhagen climate change talks. There is a cinema and a media tent both powered by solar panels, and a wind turbine and wood fires (including some in ovens made of big old tin cans) for other energy needs, such as cooking the vegan food on offer. There are composting toilets, separate ones for pees and poos, and the men's urinal is a circle of hay into which men were happily weeing. It smelt like Paris used to, when it had pissoirs in the middle of the street.

The camp is divided into areas for different parts of the country, and there are hundreds of small tents that campers have pitched to sleep in.

Hope that rain keeps off!

I particularly liked this sign pinned to the barriers around the camp. I can just hear the comments it was put up to forestall.

The entrance is guarded by volunteers 24 hours a day to protect the camp from anyone who might want to cause trouble, but access is free and welcoming. The media are absent, but there is a raised platform waiting to take them up if anything kicks off (sad that they can't just film the peaceful stuff) and there is a police presence nearby. As I returned home on a route which took me alongside the Territorial Army Centre, the woodentops and their vans were trying to hide themselves inside the walls.

No doubt they'll find some reason to create mayhem, even though they've been sworn to good behaviour after their lethal antics at the G20 talks.

Cynical? Moi? Heaven forbid.