Anti-HS2 Campaigners Can't Get To Anywhere To Protest

Campaigners trying to save the pristine, virgin countryside they say is threatened by proposals for a new High Speed line from Birmingham to London have run into an obstacle due to their principled stance against countryside damage and compulsory purchases.

“We were going to go down to that there London, but it turns out it isn't at the end of our road,” explained campaigner Hillary Billingsworth, 35. “In fact London isn't even in our lovely, picturesque village, with its robust house prices.”

The campaigners are concerned that the area around the Chilterns, which has lain untouched for hundreds of years after all the forests where cut down for farms and to build the Elizabethan royal navy, may have its character permanently altered by having trains run through it periodically.

“This land has been just like it is now since I was born and, therefore, must always have been like this and, therefore, must always remain like this,” said Billingsworth. “Apparently some of these so-called trains make noise, whatever that is, and we simply can't have any ducks in the area inconvenienced by periodically not being able to hear a frog.”

The obstacle to increased protests is that there is no mechanism by which the campaigners can go anywhere where there heartfelt pleas on behalf of the wolves and bears that where displaced by the clear-cutting of the forests in the middle ages can be heard.

“Well, I worked out where London is, but just as I was about to buy a train ticket one of our members pointed out that the Great Western train line had in fact been built through countryside 150 years ago,” said Billingsworth. “It was a great shock to us all I can tell you.”

The group's revised plans, to take a rail replacement coach trip to Parliament Square, were then thrown into disarray by another member who had recently borrowed a book on transport from their local library, which has since closed.

“Well, Brian said that the motorway was only built in the 1960s and that previously it had all been countryside,” said Billingsworth. “It turns out it is countryside under all the roads, and people's houses were demolished to build some of the bridges. It is very alarming.”

The campaigners have finally solved the transport problem, although they do admit that the revised travel plans will make their journey times somewhat longer as they plan to walk to Birmingham airport and then fly to London.

“We remembered what a good job it was that Mother Nature made all those natural tarmac runways for us to land planes on when we visit charming, unspoilt villages in Tuscany! Mind you a two-day trek across the hills to Birmingham will be a bit of a palaver,” said Billingsworth. “If only there was some other way to get from Birmingham to London quickly.”