Site announced!

Come one! Come all! Bring your friends!

EF!ers have secured the squat­ted site for this year’s Sum­mer Gath­er­ing which is (drum roll please)… on Moscar Moor in the Peak Dis­trict!

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EF!ers have been beaver­ing away since the ear­ly hours to set up some basic infra­struc­ture and now require all hands on deck to get Big Top up!

For those of ya com­ing from Sheffield, the site is acces­si­ble by a half hour direct bus ride from the city cen­tre, on the 257 bus to Cut­throat Bridge. The bus runs from about 8am until 6pm (except on Sun­days) — any gaps in the ser­vice should be filled by a shut­tle. It will then be a 5 minute walk on a slight­ly bumpy, nar­row track next to the road, and then up a track with a steep sec­tion.

Or for those of ya rolling in from the west you can take the Hope Val­ley line to Bam­ford, from there the site will be a ten minute bus jour­ney, also on the 257.

There is no on-site park­ing, and hard­ly any near­by. There is a lay­by at Cut­throat Bridge, how­ev­er this should be pri­ori­tised for site vehi­cles, peo­ple with access needs, shut­tle run vehi­cles, and peo­ple who aren’t us who want to go on a walk. So if you’re not in that cat­e­go­ry, please find a place to park else­where and take the bus or walk. You are very wel­come to do drop offs at the gate.

Please bring some water and a packed lunch if you’re arriv­ing today, as the first sched­uled meal won’t be until the evening, assum­ing the rest of set up goes to plan! If you can bring food to share — all the bet­ter 😋

Check in with each oth­er dur­ing set up, and take reg­u­lar breaks for hydra­tion and sun block! There’s a role for every­one and no one should feel like they’re being forced to do tasks they don’t feel 100% safe doing!!

The gath­er­ing will last until Mon­day 17th, which is the pack down day. On Mon­day we ask folks to help pack down the site or go home so we don’t have to source food for an excess num­ber of peo­ple. On Mon­day there will be break­fast, but no lunch or din­ner.

Hope to see you soon on this beau­ti­ful space we’ve reclaimed!

Love and rage!

Why here?

This year’s Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing is on a part of the Moscar Estate. But why did we decide to squat some land here and not some­where else?

Moscar is a 6000-acre grouse shoot­ing estate in the Peak Dis­trict which is owned by the Duke of Rut­land, a right­Site announced! wing aris­to­crat who lives in a fan­cy cas­tle in Leices­ter­shire. He is a fox hunter who also owns the Belvoir Estate, just to help paint the pic­ture. His sole inter­est in this land is to use it for the blood sport of shoot­ing grouse – and it is ruth­less­ly man­aged to achieve this.

Grouse moor­land man­age­ment is dev­as­tat­ing for ani­mal wel­fare, ecol­o­gy and the cli­mate. The Hunt Inves­ti­ga­tion Team sur­veyed Moscar between 2017 and 2022, and found that the game­keep­ers sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly use guns and traps to mur­der all poten­tial preda­tors of grouse, such as fox­es and birds of prey. Oth­er ani­mals end up in the fir­ing line too, with 71% of snare catch­es belong­ing to species they weren’t tar­get­ing as grouse preda­tors, such as bad­gers and lambs.

Part of grouse moor man­age­ment is the reg­u­lar set­ting of so-called ‘con­trolled’ fires, in order to remove areas of heather, as grouse eat the green shoots of heather regrow­ing. These fires often run out of con­trol and burn for days, cre­at­ing wild­fires which kill wildlife and destroy­ing the vital peat car­bon sink, all while accel­er­at­ing the cli­mate cri­sis. In 2023, Moscar Estate delib­er­ate­ly set fire to large areas of its land, blan­ket­ing Sheffield in smoke and caus­ing a pub­lic out­cry.

We’re here in part to sup­port a local cam­paign called Reclaim our Moors. They are demand­ing that the Duke of Rut­land sell the estate back to the pub­lic for a token sum of £1, so it can return to being used for the good of all life – not just the rich, mur­der­ing landown­ers. You can find out more and par­tic­i­pate at these events:

Sat­ur­day 15th: Intro­duc­tion to the Reclaim Our Moors cam­paign

Sun­day 16th: Join the annu­al ROM protest against grouse shoot­ing. This will involve a ~5km hike out to the ROM ral­ly spot, where there will be speech­es and music from 12pm. Come to the work­shop on Sat­ur­day to find out more!