Love Minsmere Festival - 15 September. Important information

As you may have read elsewhere, we're hosting our first Love Minsmere Festival on Sunday. This is part of our response tot he latest round of consultation over the proposed development of Sizewell C nuclear power station. The RSPB is concerned that EDF have not adequately addressed the issues that we have raised about the potential impacts of this huge development on our ability to control water levels, on coastal processes, and on noise and light pollution.

The Love Minsmere Festival is an exciting opportunity to tell EDF how much we all value Minsmere, and how worried we are about these potential impacts. The festival will include family activities, guided walks, food and retails stalls, and talks from our special guests, Bill Turnbull and Diana Quick, plus RSPB speakers. The Festival runs from 10 am, and at 1 pm we'll be asking everyone to gather together in a huge heart shape on Whin Hill before activities continue through the afternoon.

We are expecting more than 1200 people to attend the festival, and all pre-booked car parking spaces have now been allocated. We'd love to see you all at this event, but if you haven't reserved a car parking place, please try to arrive on foot or bike as we may not have space for you in the car park.

If you are planning to visit that day for some quiet birdwatching, don't worry. The festival will take place on Whin Hill with guided walks to the reedbed hides. The Coastal Trail will still offer the opportunity to enjoy some superb birdwatching, away from the crowds. We will be closing Canopy Hide and the Woodland Trail to enable us to photograph the event from a drone, but all other trails and facilities will remain open as usual.

We hope to see you there

  • Love that the Love Minsmere festival appears on Google maps; just wish some of the roads we use to get there had not been closed for road works. Looking for alternatives at this late stage is soooo silly. Even the A14 is closed as I plan. Needing a black stick with white ends! But hey, the forecast is good and we're looking forward to a different day to our normal Minsmere visits.
  • And what a lovely day it was! It carried a strong political message wrapped in a fun day. And not a single traffic issue - will I trust roadworks.org again. Thanks to all. Bill looked well and has to be congratulated for his stirring words. See you next year for the second Love Minsmere Festival!