...down to Brighton Vegfest! yo!

Just when it seemed like the work week would never end, the weekend came and now we start a new season of vegan festivals. The Birmingham Vegans went to Brighton Veg Fest last year but we weren't even in the UK last year...we were in CANADA!

Anywho, Plantbased Nurse drove us two, as it was much cheaper for us all to pitch in for gas, than it would have been for all of us to get the train there.

For this stay, we got ourselves an Airbnb. Check in was really easy. We told them when we would arrive, and they said they would be there for us. We checked in and they gave us a parking pass for the car. We were able to drop off our bags before check in, as they had another guest still in the room. They also gave us the house key and said the rooms would be ready upon our return. They were and it was a great stay.

Here are some obligatory motorway photos. 

It only took us about 2.5 hours to get to Brighton, not bad. There wasn't too much traffic we left Birmingham at about 7:30am. Thanks for driving us Plantbased Nurse.

Brighton has cool street art too.

We made it to our Airbnb after knocking on the wrong door and confusing some students. One of the students there even had the same name as the airbnb host we had been speaking to through the airbnb app to add to the confusion. Our real airbnb hosts were very nice. After getting our parking pass and ditching our stuff we made our way to the Brighton centre.

Nationwide Building Society closest free cashpoint to Brighton Centre

There was a huge queue for Vegfest but it was moving pretty quickly. Unfortunately there weren't any free cash points, only pay ones, so we had to make our way back up the street later on to get out more cash without paying a charge.

Since we only had £5 we hit up all the free samples for our breakfast. Adventures in fruit were giving out free south african apricot/plums if you did a selfie and hashtaged them on instagram so we did.

Next we went to Essential Vegan and got some seitan burgers for breakfast. Luckily they accepted card payments.

There were lots of food booths with free samples everywhere. Everything from chocolate to vegan Caviar.

I don't know how many times I've heard my non-vegan friends complaining "I'd go vegan but I just can't give up Caviar". It's a common complaint. Don't worry pals, Vegetarian Caviar Club have you covered. I think this would go pretty good on vegan sushi.

 Vegan donuts! These were some Italian vegan donuts. They had Boston cream donuts and we tried a caramel one that was pretty amazing. Thanks Pomodoro E Basilico.

We decided to head outside for a bit and check out the beach while the sun was still out. It was pretty cold and windy though if you can't tell by the pictures.

Brighton has a unique beach with these rocks. You didn't have to worry about getting sand in your shoes.

We took a walk along the seawall towards Brighton Pier.

Ah, here we are, Brighton Pier.

Great view of Brighton from the pier.

 They've got a wheel too! Everyones got a wheel.

We made our way back to Veg Fest. A protest against the Badger cull was going on outside the venue. 

Inside veg fest we watched an X Factor style show where people made short presentations on their approach to vegan activism in front of some judges.The judges were Tim Shieff world champion freerunner, Will Tuttle #1 bestseller author and a man whose name I forget that runs Vegan Publishers. There were a number of different approaches that people took. One presenter made a book on vegan travel, another makes t-shirts with vegan messages on them, another makes youtube videos.

Rob, one of the regulars at the Birmingham Vegan pizza nights, did a great presentation on his running of London Vegan Meetup and the importance of social events.

London Vegan Meetup presentation

Vegan Geezer did an excellent spoken word performance with video about making youtube videos to speak the vegan message and inspiring others to do so as well.

Vegan Geezer won the X factor competition. After the presentations we took a walk around the stalls some more.

We got some half price 'chicken' fajitas from loving hut as it was the end of the first day of the festival.

We headed back to the airbnb. Check it out. It was really nice. The hosts were cool and we talked to one of them for quite a while.

We met some friends at the Cowley Club for a bit and then went to a pub called Prince George Pub which is a veggie pub with lots of vegan options.

We didn't stay out too late though since we wanted to get a somewhat early start to explore Brighton, see the sights and get some breakfast as well.

We were out of the house around 9am and we made our way to a restaurant called Wai Kika Moo Kau which is a veggie/vegan place that serves breakfast.

There was the Brighton half Marathon going on the same weekend as vegfest. That explains why most of the hotels were all booked up.

North Laine

Wai Kika Moo Kau

We had some nice breakfasts at Wai Kika Moo Kau with some of our friends that went to the vegfest. We also met some London vegans that were in Brighton for Vegfest as well.

Yum

Afterwards we took a walk around Brighton to see some of the sights.

We saw the Brighton Pavillion.

We saw the Brighton Dome.

And we took a walk through the Lanes.

Next we headed to vegfest for day number 2!

A chef was giving a cooking demonstration. We watched a cooking demo and we got to sample some of the food that she made as well.

We couldn't resist trying a piece of this vegan cheese cakes from Essential Vegan.

Next we headed upstairs for some standup comedy. The best ones were Alasdair Beckett-King and Carl Donnelly so check them out. Carl Donnelly kept getting interrupted by announcements over the PA system but he made the best of it by turning the awkwardness into a funny reoccurring joke.

We were getting a bit hungry so after the comedy show we got some vegan doner from Beelzebab which were pretty tasty.

We ate the doner while watching a presentation on vegan publishing which turned out to have quite a tense atmosphere because an audience member had a problem with one of the books that Vegan Publishers had put out on fruitarianism and "breathairianism" (not kidding). His complaint was, quite rightly, that publishing a book with content not grounded in science does not help the vegan movement. So it was interesting to watch the back and forth on that debate. Aside from the debate, the talk had some useful information on how to go about presenting a book you've written to publishers.

Next we walked around getting killer last minute deals on stuff.

We got vegan sushi for 50% off!

 Then we headed back to the car...

...and drove off into the sunset. Good times.

A little video we made while we were in Brighton. It's just to give a different perception of our trip.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post and want to see more vegan festivals, check out our post on "To Bristol VEGFEST we go!"