A few weeks ago we visited the small town of Skipton in north Yorkshire, it was not long before we came across one of the best selections of vegan food this side of one of our festivals. The Castle Inn is a traditional English pub with a wealth of history, in fact The Castle Inn is a grade II English Heritage listed building dating back to the early 1800s. As coaching house, it provided shelter and nourishment for the many visitors to the town’s ancient agricultural market. The original stables still exist today to the rear of the inn.
One of the largest challenges when going vegan is eating out, although most places have vegetarian options few still have vegan menus, but to my surprise this cosy pub had a large blackboard outside showing it was a vegan friendly establishment, so we had to give it a try.
The selection of vegan options looked delicious and found it hard to decided what the choose, then I was faced with a even larger dilemma when the waitress offered me the special of the day (Fish & Chips), obviously the fish was not of the swimming variety but tofu. The waitress went in to great depth on how the Chef prepared it, but can’t recall all the details due to my hunger was taking my focus away, but apparently the answer to vegan fish and chips was in the way the Chef used seaweed. The average meal cost approx £9 which I thought was fair as the portions were very generous, although I did manage to finish the meal I struggled with the Mississippi Mud Pie (£5.25).
The Castle Inn had a warm cosy atmosphere that was very vegan friendly, if your in the area pop along for a great evening (Quiz night is on Sunday’s). Incidentally when we were there for lunch and our evening meal, we were surprised how many people were asking for their vegan options, again this goes to show that veganism is growing in the UK.
After over a year of marketing, phone calls, emails, interviews and social media, Bradford’s 1st Vegan Festival was finally here. Although we spent over 12 months promoting this event we were unsure how it would be received, but our worries were soon dissolved as the turn out was better than expected.
These type of events are a testament to the growing vegan movement here in the UK and abroad. Although we regularly see social media groups and forum with a massive followings, until the large numbers are observed first hand it sometimes can be unbelievable that there are that many like minded people around.
The feedback from the public and stall holders has been overwhelmingly positive and in fact some stall holders sold. The feedback from the public also was amazing, many took the time to talk to myself and my family about how much of a great experience they had.
I would like to thank everyone who was involved in Bradford Vegan Festival, including all the stall holders that have traveled considerable distances to show their amazing product, services and causes. Huge thanks to the speakers that have spent many hours practicing their presentation to share with us, many in fact also traveled huge distances to do so. I would like to thank the staff and security of Bradford FC for going above and beyond what was asked.
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Finally I would like to thank every single person that attended this event, everyone makes the effort to attend these events do their bit to help make the veganism movement stronger. We will no doubt be returning to Bradford in 2018 bigger and better, meanwhile wish us luck for Sheffield Vegan Festival to be held on the 10th September 2017.
If you attended this event, please leave a comment below or if you have any images or videos send them to us via social media and we will put them on the website.
A nice review by Naturally Delicious of our first Edinburgh vegan festival, that was very very successful.
For more videos and photo, please take a look at our gallery (Click Here), or if you want to keep up date on future festivals in Edinburgh, like us on our Edinburgh Vegan Festival Facebook page (Click Here). Hope to see you all again next year.