MORE than 50 environmental campaigners from across the UK have set up camp on top of Winchester's St Catherine's Hill.

Under canvas and with log fires they have gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of the vain battle to save Twyford Down from being carved in two by the M3 motorway.

But the cold and wet three-day meet, which was due to end today, was also a commemoration of a battle which turned into a rallying cry for environmentalists and sparked bigger protests over road building at places like Newbury.

The scale of the direct action eventually persuaded the government to slash its road building programme.

It was in December 1992 that the Donga Tribe, who occupied part of the down, were forcibly evicted by security guards in fluorescent jackets which led to the day being dubbed Yellow Wednesday.

About half of the weekend's gathering said they had been there on that fateful day.

One of the Dongas, who declined to give her name, told the Daily Echo: "It was unbelievable, surreal and amazingly shocking. It just went on and on. We kept throwing ourselves back in front of the bulldozers."

Asked about her feelings coming back to the scene ten years later, she said: "I was lying in the tent last night listening to the sound of traffic. It is just unrelenting. It is a vortex of noise, but it used to be so quiet - such a beautiful little place."

The protesters delayed the construction of the M3 but it eventually opened in 1994.