Businesses at the Gallagher Leisure Park in Thornbury are to discuss how they can stop gipsies resettling on their land.

A group of more than 80 caravans and vehicles arrived on Tuesday last week and stayed for a week before moving off and leaving mattresses, boxes, sofas and rubbish bags.

The travellers settled on a car park belonging to Phoenix Park Golf Club, next to the Odeon Cinema.

Simon Barraclough, who owns the club, said he had lost more than £1,000 in trade alone last week as the golf course had been empty, except for gipsy children playing in the sand bunkers.

"We hope to have a meeting about the possibility of getting some sort of system to put barriers up and man them at the main road entrances," he said. "I don't know how it will work, but we have to do something before they come back again."

He believed the Council would be brought in to clean up the mess and a bill would be sent to the management agency, based in Manchester. "The cost will come out of the fees that we pay the agency. It will probably cost more than £2,000," he said.

Three-piece suites, gas cylinders and human waste were also left by the travellers, and trees on both the course and the car park were damaged. Some were burned.

Mr Barraclough believed the travellers had moved on because of the weekend's disturbances.

"The court judgement wasn't going to be served on them until Friday this week and normally they don't leave until they are served papers," he added.

Nobody had visited the golf course all week and he had had only one call from a golfer this week.

"You can't expect people to pay to play when there is all this mess about," he said. "Last week the travellers were sunbathing on the golf course and driving their vans on it. Human waste is all over the place and the stink up there is terrible."