Welsh hippies casually explain why eating 80lbs of shrooms is impossible

A vintage Welsh newspaper article from approximately the 1970s-80s documenting a hippie encampment gathering to harvest psilocybin mushrooms near Aberystwyth, Wales. The piece includes interviews with various hippies explaining their presence, local conflict with 'hooligans,' and casual discussion of psychedelic drug consumption. Photographs show tents, mushrooms, and people at the campsite. The tone is anthropologically bemused reporting on counterculture activities. Extracted text: WELSH NEWS Only hooligans disturb magic mushroom hippies News focus by Ivor Wynne Jones "LOCAL hooligans are our biggest worry," said one of the hippies as they assembled ten miles outside Aberystwyth to harvest the hallucinatory "magic mushroom" Psilocybin, first identified in the area last summer. Several hundred men and women, and a few children, had arrived by car, bus, horse or on foot to camp on the remote left bank of the River Ystwyth, south of the scattered hillside community of Llanafan. "We are too far from anywhere to cause annoyance to anyone, but we were attacked last night by two car-loads of Welsh-speaking bullies," said their spokesman. Dismissing the disparity in numbers, he said the incident was typical of people who were at a disadvantage in that they were attacked while on a "trip" after a supper of magic mushroom soup. A few of the tents were collapsed and one hippy received a blow in the face as the attackers disappeared into the night—over the bridge made by the hippies across a deep ditch designed to keep them out after last year's magic mushroom festival. "I have yet to find one of the giant mushrooms risk of anyone consuming a fatal dose of Welsh magic mushrooms. "You would have to eat about 80lb of them to do yourself any harm, and you just could not eat that amount," he said. A 26-year-old former postman from Stockport adding that about 40 were required for a good hallucinogenic experience, "far superior to LSD." "He claimed there was no A former Manchester grave-digger said a mushroom "trip" was beyond description but he disputed whether any offence was being committed under the drug laws. Some of the hippies on site. "A couple of policemen have been nosing around and we expect them to return. Police searches have become routine since the drug craze started. "A former Manchester grave-digger said a mushroom trip was beyond description and a trip could be quite deep," a religious experience. "The mushroom trip," he said, "is a classic." The hippies intend staying there for about a fortnight, hoping for the right combination of weather—a cool night and warm days, with plenty of sunshine—to produce a good crop. "One or two bands will probably turn up before the festival is over, but we have our own cassette players to see us through," said one of the group.