Video: Our fight to stop fracking

They are a hardy bunch, muffled in wet weather gear and furry headwear, the rain dripping off their coats as they hold their placards up to the wind and the occasional passing car.

Talk is of the plunging price of crude – good as it makes shale gas less viable – and just how long they expect to be out here for.

“It will be as long as it takes,” says Jon Mager, a retired council director, as another flurry of rain whips across the bare countryside.

“We’re on a roll,” adds Wendy Cross, former teacher, volunteer and Labour Party member.

Aged from 64 to 82, these are the middle-class pensioners determined to save the East Yorkshire Wolds from oil and gas explorer Rathlin Energy, which got permission a year ago to carry out a series of tests on a well at Crawberry Hill the company drilled in 2013.

Little has happened on site since then apart from the comings and goings of police and protesters; no tests have taken place and the key reason for a protest in the first place – the mini-fall off test which demonstrators felt could develop into full-scale hydraulic fracturing – has been ruled out.

A month ago East Riding Council spent £75,000 clearing the roadside camp which sprang up last May. Where the motley collection of tents and caravans once stood is now bare earth and its inhabitants have dispersed to other anti-fracking protests.

But anyone who thought their departure may signal the end to the long-running protest against Rathlin was wrong, as the dozen have since been taking it in turns to stand out in this bleak spot, for no other reward than the occasional honk from a car.

Rathlin have repeatedly said they will not use hydraulic fracturing – the method of using a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals to split rocks and release gas from layers of rock deep within the earth.

And they insist the reservoirs they are targeting can be tapped by conventional means.

When they do return they will be testing to the Kirkham Abbey level, at least 1,000m above the Bowland Shale.

But the protesters are convinced if they let their guard down, wells will multiply across the East Yorkshire countryside and all kinds of harm will flow from this, not least contamination of the drinking water supplies.

Despite the fact several suffer from health problems and today the rain is hammering down, the atmosphere is up-beat and the faces jolly among what is a tight-knit group of like-minded people, who count each other as friends and have zero trust in Rathlin.

In fact Mrs Cross ventures that the NHS would do well to offer protesting as a way of keeping people well.

Mrs Cross – out today with her pal and fellow veteran of Greenham Common, Judy Dickinson, 82 – said: “There was a feature in The Yorkshire Post about loneliness and a man opening a pub for lunches for the elderly. Something like this is really good for people who want to get out and meet people.

“It’s marvellous – you just have to have a shared vision, a shared belief.

“Last Wednesday when the police came someone said if we were standing a line we could be done for obstruction but if you walk it’s OK.

“ It was like a drama exercise, the blood was flowing – I said I think the NHS should send people up to protest because it is wonderful for your well-being.”

Of the assembled protesters, more than half spent their working lives teaching in schools and universities and a third are Green Party members. Two are members of the Labour Party, three are volunteers and four are birdwatchers.

Printmaker Val Mager has terminal cancer and says the protests “gives you an absolute focus and sense of purpose”.

What does her specialist say to this? “I don’t tell my oncologist”, she replies.

“I see this as a gift. Every day is precious because I know I have this hanging over me. I know we are on the side of the right – and the fresh air is good for my health.”

A Buddhist, she sees a spiritual dimension in what they are doing and says they were all struck by a pair of buzzards which appeared – and were then joined by three others – just as contractors were dismantling the tower that stood in the entrance to the site.

“We were all standing there really despondent when someone said: ‘Look there’s a buzzard’.

“We all saw them as a message from nature to keep going. It’s a joy to be with these people and we are making a difference.

“It’s a rebel gene we share. This is bigger than fracking, it’s about the planet.”

Mrs Dickinson, who used to drive Hull CND buses to Greenham Common back in the 1980s, accepts the point they are driving to Crawberry Hill in fossil-fuel guzzling cars, but insists renewables should have a far greater role to play.

She says the coalition’s change to trespass laws, allowing fracking to take place under someone’s home without permission, was “very destructive”.

Mike Brookes and his wife Anne, from the nearby village of Walkington, are also regulars.

Mike, 64, a retired probation officer in high-vis jacket and sporting a Toxic sign, splits his time between the campaign against Rathlin, wildlife – on Tuesdays he’s at Tophill Nature Reserve building and putting up bird boxes – and volunteering at country houses.

As far as he’s concerned he’s protecting the five Ws, including Walkington, wildlife and water. When the camp was there they bought up food and he helped support people when they were facing court.

The suggestion that they are doing it to keep themselves occupied draws this response: “There’s plenty of other things to do – you have to make room for this.

“If I wasn’t doing this I would be doing other forms of volunteering.

“This has impinged and I’m glad it has – all these things are worthless if you can’t protect your own land and your freedom.”

Rathlin did not want to comment directly, but their website contains 
an apology for the fact their East Yorkshire sites have drawn the attention of the “anti-fracking movement”, saying the sites have 
been “incorrectly characterised as locations where hydraulic fracturing is planned” and the protesters “appear to have an agenda which is quite unrelated to our work – past or planned.”

Chairman David Montagu-Smith 
has previously blamed “scaremongering” by campaigners making “ill-informed allegations” for whipping up residents, saying there was not a single complaint to the authorities when the two 3,000m 
deep wells were first drilled at Crawberry Hill and West Newton two years ago.

He said: “There has been no well failure (at West Newton) or spillage from the site.

“There was one incident where a litre of drinking water split onto the road and that was turned into widespread pollution of the neighbouring farm land.”