"I've just spent the morning with a division of the Clown Army, whose job is to divert officers' attention at the police checkpoints so the main body of protesters can break through the blockades. There are about 500 of them, spraying water and giving the police backchat. They're enjoying some success.

"It's a cat-and-mouse game. There are thousands of protesters, determined to disrupt the summit any way they can. The G8 leaders themselves and their delegations have been arriving at Rostock airport about 60 km away and obviously they just fly into the summit venue at Heiligendamm. So the militants are trying to stop the support staff getting through, the interpreters for example.

"Unfortunately, they've also taken aim at the journalists, another soft target, and have managed to block a narrow-gauge railway that is being used to take reporters to briefings at the Heilegendamm centre. One of my Times colleagues was due to take that train this morning and has been waiting 90 minutes for a boat instead - but even that is not sure now. Of 4,000 journalists at the media centre, only 30 have managed to make it through to the summit.

"So they've blocked the railway, they've blocked the motorway from Rostock in three places, and some of them have got to walls of the summit venue itself.

It’s Grrrrr8 (honest)

As the G8 summit begins in Germany, Hugo Rifkind explains everything you need to know – and lots of stuff you don’t

Multimedia

• Video: Our young man in Heiligendamm

• Audio: Behind the scenes at the G8

• Pictures: G8 summit

BACKGROUND

• Quotes: what Putin told The Times

• Blair reinvented the Middle Ages

• The West is starting this Cold War

• Save the planet: give to China

Related Internet Links

• Official site of the G8 summit Heiligendamm

Related Links

• Briefing: the Merkel Method & how the G8 works

• G8 activists clash with police amid climate row

• Blair promises to tackle Putin at G8 summit

"There's a bit of a carnival atmosphere among the protesters - this is what they've been waiting for all week and they love the idea of outwitting the cops. They're irritating the hell out of the police, and the locals, and they're also hoping to provoke the police into an angry reaction, I suppose so that they can then claim the moral high ground.

"But apart from the major protests, like trying to block the motorway, there are smaller groups moving around trying to cause problems. When 60 people on bicycles just stop in the middle of a small village, there's not much you can do.

"And the Germans are very good at this kind of protest. Most of the people I spoke to this morning were trained in the anti-nuclear movement, they've been trying to stop nuclear waste cargoes for the past 15 years or more. They use bikes and motorbikes. They know how to cross country terrain quickly. They use military planning to outwit the police - all tactics developed in the 1980s."

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