BEACONS blazed throughout Wiltshire on Monday to herald the Countryside Alliance's Liberty and Livelihood march.

Towering bonfires lit up the night sky to publicise the biggest peacetime demonstration this country has ever seen.

Coachloads of countryside enthusiasts will travel to London on Sunday to campaign for rural rights.

Around 200 beacons were organised by the Countryside Alliance's action team in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Dorset.

Fire crews were mistakenly called out to some of the sites after receiving emergency calls.

Beacons were lit at 7.30pm and each one fired a rocket. The plan was to launch them in a chain, starting in Scotland at 8.30pm and finishing in the south. In the excitement rockets in Wiltshire were fired prematurely flashing red and green light, the colours of the march, across the county.

The Shadow Minister for Rural Affairs and MP for North Wiltshire James Gray ignited a rocket at one of the Beaufort Hunt's beacons, at Monument Farm, in Bremhill.

He said: "This beacon and the march is not about hunting it's about village shops and post offices closing, rural despair, farming, illegal imports of meat and a whole range of other rural issues the government is simply ignoring. The only thing this government understands is numbers and muscles."

Will Templer, Regional Countryside Alliance Director of Wessex, said 394 coaches and three trains had been booked carrying 21,500 people to the march, but many more were expected to travel independently.