TRAVELLERS set up camp in the centre of Petersfield on Tuesday night when they moved onto the site of the former coalyard next to the town's railway station.

Insp Steve Sargent of Petersfield Police told The Herald the travellers who had been camping beside Penns Place had moved off earlier in the week, but it was not known whether they were the same group as the travellers who were now at the old coalyard.

"This is private land," he said, "and provided that the travellers are not causing a nuisance to the community we would not take any action."

q HUMAN excrement and other mess left by travellers at Bramshott Chase has left the Ministry of Defence, the owners of the land, with a huge bill for cleaning up the contaminated land.

The MOD site has been occupied twice in the past month by travellers with up to 25 caravans.

The first group of travellers left over the jubilee weekend after breaching an eviction notice that had already been in effect for a week. The second group was given notice on Monday this week but this time left within 24 hours.

The resulting mess has led the MOD to put the area out of use for at least a month, or until "nature takes its course".

"They've left the site in a diabolical condition; there's human excrement and rubbish everywhere," said Major Tom Wye. "There's no possible way of cleaning it all up so we've put the whole area out of military use until nature takes its course."

The MOD has called in specialist contractors to clean up as much of the site's rubbish as they can, but the effluent will be left to decompose.

"Although it's very unlikely, there could be hypodermic needles, anything," the major said. "

We just can't take the risk."

Ordinarily the site would be used for training soldiers, cadets and TA members, crawling through the woods and setting up ambushes. He described the quarantine as a "major setback".

"We're approaching our very busy season, June to September, and we would normally expect 800 cadets in Longmoor that fan out to the various training areas," he explained.

"We now have one less training area, which is a significant reduction."

Some operations have been relocated, and others had to be cancelled altogether.