The protesters assembled at the eco-camp just north of Heathrow are a mixed bunch. There are the inevitable dreadlocked Luddites, women in binbag skirts and sandals, and dogs on strings, but there are also school-teachers, retired civil servants and vets.

Journalists, officially, “must be accompanied at all times by two members of the Media Team, who will carry a flag to make them identifiable”. Stuff that, I thought, as I ducked under the rope in the gathering dusk, rucksack on my back. Though the protesters declaim endlessly about the media being craven employees of BP or Shell, you can be sure that if this lot ever came to power, it really would be the end of a free press. There’s much windy talk of “inclusivity” in the camp, but in place of blacks or gays, the protesters hate journalists and oilmen. We are their Other.

After setting up my tent in a sodden corner of the field I went to the kitchen-under-canvas for my vegan curry, donating £3 – 10p for the curry plus a £2.90 tip. Standing in the queue I began to be tormented by the voices in my head. Specifically the voice of my inner Jeremy Clarkson. “Go on,” it said, “ask if they’ve got any dolphin burgers. Ask for a giant panda steak. Ask that woman over there if she knitted her jumper out of organic muesli. Go on.”

The next morning I arose as sprightly as anyone can after a late-night vegan curry and two hours’ sleep in a quagmire beside runway two of the world’s busiest airport. First stop, the compost loos. Plastic sheeting, sawdust, a bottomless pit yawning beneath your bottom. Afterwards I saw a sign for the Activist Trauma Support team in the Well-being tent, and very nearly went in.

I steered well clear of the Tranquillity tent. Anything to do with chanting and meditation raises my blood pressure. If you want to relax, what’s wrong with a triple espresso and a cigarette? Instead I sampled some meetings. They don’t go by proposals and majority voting, they lead towards “consensus decision-making”. They were agony.

I wanted to try the Argentine tango class for a bit of light relief after that, but a blackboard said it had been delayed “due to police interference”. Could this really be true? Images of a pitiless baton charge by some body-armoured snatch squad: “Oi, you there, in the fancy dance-wear! You’re nicked!” But in another tent was a talk on the hard science of climate change, and here at last was something that made sense. For all the fringe freaki-ness and unsmiling self-importance, there’s no question that the Heathrow protesters have the scientific consensus behind them. If only they knew what to do with it.

Sadly I failed to make “Climate Change Is a Feminist Issue” and “Singing to Mourn, to Celebrate and to Resist” for reasons which will become clear. Missing this second meeting was particularly sad, as I’d composed my own little rap song in readiness, during the seven hours or so that I lay awake in my tent. “Climate change gonna take some beating, Better bin that burger and turn down yer heating! If you’re not one of Us then you must be the Other, So move yo ass and f*** you mutha!” I knew it needed more work, but I thought it might be a helpful start.

Then sudden excitement at the perimeter fence. Whistles, halloos, and cries of “Pigs on site!” The police were plodding round us in the rain. The anarchists plodded along with them, secretly yearning for some outrageous abuse of their rights but getting none. Very disappointing. There was excited talk that MI5 were here, too. It apparently never occurred to anyone that the spooks just might have bigger things on their plate. A police photographer snapped away.

Hardcore anarchists rushed towards the camera, apparently desperate to be photographed. Then they produced big sheets of plastic and held them up before their faces. Desperate not to be photographed. No, desperate to be photographed not being photographed. All very confusing. They reckoned the police photography was about intimidation. I asked a copper. Turns out they take photos so that later, if there’s a real riot, they can pick out the offenders.

Another man at the gate expressed a more forthright opinion of the protesters. “As far as I’m concerned, an aeroplane could crash and kill the f*****’ lot of them. Be a blessing.” I thought he might be a local resident, but in fact the villagers of nearby Sipson and Harlington, doomed to obliteration by the third runway, are right behind the protest.

Now he was going on about the camp’s wheelie bins. Many of them were stamped “Lewisham council”, and he reckoned they’d been nicked. “Where are you from?” I asked. “I work for Lewisham council myself,” he said, looking away.

What was the provenance of the Lewisham wheelie bins? One cheery character with long blond dreadlocks reckoned they had been “borrowed”. I quite liked that. It felt honest, and he laughed when he said it. Back at the Welcome tent I tried to inquire further, and encountered Beanie Boy.

“Are you a journalist?” he asked suspiciously. I’d decided I wouldn’t lie if asked. Yes, I was a filthy, snooping, untrustworthy, lickspittle hack. It quickly became the Unwelcome tent. A girl leant over my shoulder and said my question about the wheelie bins was “disrespectful”. Another girl in steel-rimmed glasses joined us.

“I have personal issues about talking to the corporate media,” said Beanie Boy to Steely Girl, gesturing towards me fastidiously. Steely Girl fixed me with a steely gaze, and then asked me to leave the camp.

I had to struggle for a moment to get my head around this. Hang on. You’re trespassing on someone else’s land. They don’t want you here, but they’re prepared to tolerate you for a week or so. You make a lot of noise about inclusivity and communality. Yet when someone else comes along, you demand that they leave immediately? Isn’t that a bit, um – hypocritical?

The protesters are an infuriating mix of hard work, dedication, incontrovertible scientific correctness, paranoia, arrogance and humourless authoritarianism. As I left, a bunch of other journos waited meekly at the gate. They would be shepherded around the camp and controlled as closely as any United Nations weapons inspector in Iran.

The climate change campers’ motto should be, “Do as we do, not as we say.” At a practical level, they’re often brilliant. The homemade wind turbines, for instance, assembled from pure scrap: a scaffolding pole, some steel cable, a rudder made out of an old desk-top. And they generate enough energy for a whole row of lights at night.

This is Dark Green at its most appealing, recycling taken to a whole new level, and an eloquent, wordless challenge to the rest of us. Our grandparents’ “make-do-and-mend” generation would admire it; just as they would be bewildered, even sickened, by a visit to any modern municipal tip: the abandoned bicycles, toys, household gadgets, all in perfect working order; the binbags of clothes and shoes, many worn just once. Instead of the negativity of the environmental gospel, stated as “consume less, travel less, shop less”, the protesters’ lifestyle here exemplifies a splendid self-reliance, independence and almost comical DIY ingenuity. Even those compost loos, I have to admit.

But their vanity sets their own “alternativeness” and victimhood above the more pragmatic business of spreading the message; and in the end, their own little homemade wind turbines aren’t going to save anything. It’s when they persuade the rest of us to do likewise that things might get started.

It was time to go. I was tired. I’d slept badly under the bank of broken red cloud that lay over Heathrow. The runways give off a perpetual heat, the sloes in the blackthorn hedges round about are all unnaturally ripe: globally warmed already. Behind the clouds, the jet engines screamed and roared all night long. No wonder I slept badly.

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