For 1,088 days they have braved storms, floods, snow and torrential rain to prevent the spread of an illegal gipsy camp on the edge of their village.
But yesterday the villagers of Meriden celebrated victory after the Romanies who threatened to destroy their rural idyll were finally forced to leave.
The triumph is a hard-fought win for the hardy band who have maintained a round-the-clock vigil to stop further development at the camp since April 2010.
Defiant: A traveller fuels a fire at the site in Meriden yesterday as villagers triumphed over the Romanies
At the same time, the residents have faced a long and arduous legal fight to remove the travellers, who have repeatedly used delaying tactics to stay on the site.
Some of the villagers have also faced death threats, had their homes vandalised and been labelled racist.
Last month the gipsies lost their three-year legal battle to stay on the land. A judge at the High Court in Birmingham gave them until the weekend to move and ordered they must restore the West Midlands site to its former state within a month.
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The last travellers to leave, in a final act of defiance, started a fire and torched a caravan. Today the villagers will end their blockade of the site and mark their victory with a minute's silence at 10am.
David McGrath, spokesman for Residents Against Inappropriate Development, said: 'There is a great sense of relief that they are leaving.'
The determined residents - some of whom are now in their eighties - have taken turns to huddle under a tarpaulin with little more than a fire for comfort in temperatures as low as minus 18c every day and night since the Romany gipsies arrived.
Time to leave: A caravan is towed from the site at the end of a 1,088 day year battle in the courts
In a bizarre twist, the residents at one point found themselves ordered by planning officials to remove their rudimentary protest camp, while no action was being taken to remove the travellers.
The residents' nightmare began when the Meriden gipsies paid £100,000 to buy the paddock and, in time-honoured fashion, moved on to the land at the start of a bank holiday weekend - when the council was powerless to stop them developing the site.
But they had not reckoned on the determination of villagers to preserve the Meriden Gap green belt which separates the village from Coventry and Solihull.
As word spread, residents swung into action, descending on the eight-acre site and forming a human barricade to prevent a convoy of lorries from delivering 1,800 tons of hardcore rubble to the site later that evening.
Ever since, around 200 residents have manned their camp around the clock to make sure the site is not developed any further, working to a rota with shifts lasting anything from an hour to overnight.
Until now the travellers have repeatedly managed to stop their eviction in a tortuous legal process that has involved 19 court appearances.
Damage: The field, which has been occupied by travellers since April 2010, was left torn up by vehicles
After moving on to the site, the travelling families lodged a retrospective planning application, which was turned down by the local authority, but they managed to stay as they lodged an appeal.
In 2011, Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, upheld a planning inspector's recommendation that the appeal should be dismissed - but the travellers continued to remain.
Last month, the travellers finally lost their three year legal battle to stay on the land, when they lost their appeal against Mr Pickles' decision at the High Court.
Mr McGrath said that they would now campaign to make sure the site, turned into a muddy quagmire by the travellers, was returned to its former state - a paddock once covered in wildflowers.
He said: 'They still need to return the camp to the way it was the day before they moved in, exactly the way it was.
'That means not just leaving but removing all the sewerage and water pipes under the ground that they installed and reseeding the ground.
Vigil: Villagers (l-r) Ken Lapworth, Maggie Ledbrook and David McGrath, four days before their victory
'We will keep up with targeted protests until that is done.'
He added: 'We need to make sure they don't just bulldoze everything, they must return it to exactly how it was before they came.
Smoke: Firefighters were called to the site after the Romanies set fire to a large shed last week
'We'd like to stay until they have, but we know that the council have taken legal action against both sides so we will leave on Monday.
'We will hold a minute's silence when we leave for those members of the protest who didn't make it.'
Mr McGrath added that the group had helped to lobby for new laws introduced which give councils greater power to deal with 'bank holiday' invasions and illegal developments.
Previously, councils couldn't take action against occupants of caravans once they had moved on to a site, but they now have new powers which allow them to halt illegal developments to send temporary stop notices.
He said: 'The legacy of the campaign is not only in the lane in terms of the battle for the land being won.
'Our country's laws have changed. It's far wider than the little local battle. It's been a case of local actions with national implications.'
Mr McGrath, who has received multiple death threats, reflected on the personal sacrifices he had made whilst leading the campaign and vowed to spend more time with his family.
The training consultant said: 'I'll be able to spend more time with my 82-year-old father who's not very well. I regret not spending as much time with him as I should have.
'I can also spend more time on my business, as I'm self-employed.'
Landowner Noah Burton, who calls himself the 'Bin Laden of Meriden' and is a spokesman for the travellers, yesterday joked about how the camp had damaged the village's reputation as he repeated claims that the residents' campaign has been racially motivated.
Hard-fought: Travellers speak to firefighters who were called to put out flames at the site
He said: 'There are no winners here, we have been left homeless and the residents have been left with the stigma of the gypsy site having been there.
'The head of RAID's house is still barely worth £5,000 even when we have gone, the history of us being there is all over the place.
'This was never about green belt land, it was only about not wanting gypsies on their doorsteps, they told me that many times.'
He added: 'I can't tell you where the families have gone because many of them are forced to stop at the roadside now and the police have moved them on a few times already.
'We will still be around, you just won't be able to see us any more on the land.
'The council could have helped us, found a new site and moved us in straight away. Then everyone would have been happy.'