Glasgow: The Return. This time we mean business!
For the weekend Dec 4-6th, we did an epic road trip to Glasgow, Scotland with a couple of our vegan friends (12yearsavegan and The Vegan Engineer aka Deadpan Vegan) from Birmingham.
They picked us up around 4pm Friday and we made our 5 hour journey through England and into Scotland. We had looked into train tickets for the 4 of us and it was super expensive! In fact every time we check trains to Scotland they are always really expensive. This is why we decided to rent a car. Between the 4 of us, it ended up being a 1/3rd of the price of train tickets. Plus we had the added luxury and convenience of travelling by car.
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Our fancy rental car for the weekend. |
Once that was all sorted check in was easy, the caretaker came to let us in, and she met us in the parking lot. She was there at our expected arrival.
Both of us Wanderlust Vegans have been to Glasgow before back in 2011 on a family road trip across Scotland. We didn't get to spend much time in Glasgow last time. We only had enough time to find our guest house, go to the Vegan Cafe/Pub called the 78, then a bar that used to be a church near our guest house, then sleep for a little bit and leave for Canada. We've been looking forward to coming back to Glasgow since then.
The next day we made our way to Vegfest. We thought it was a 5 minute walk, but it ended up being 30 mins, so we drove and parked. Plus it was super windy and rainy. It was humorous watching people attempting to use umbrellas. The windy was turning everyone's umbrellas inside out. Vegfest was at SECC, which was a beautiful venue.
There was a lot of great stalls and interesting speakers as well.
After his talk we walked around again, watched some bands and got some more food.
Caribbean food bowl from Soya Jerk. |
The next talk we saw was How Not To Promote Veganism by Vegan Lass. The speaker took an abolitionist approach to promoting veganism arguing that campaigns saving one type of animal are bad, promoting lacto-ovo vegetarianism is bad, promoting meat reduction like meat free Mondays is bad, promoting veganism for health reasons is bad and using sex to sell veganism is bad. She made some interesting points about how these tactics distract from the overall issue of stopping all animal suffering but we don't think they are as harmful as she seemed to think they are. Based on our experience people go vegan different ways and people go vegan for different reasons but then stay vegan for compassionate reasons. What do you think?
After the talk we walked around eating free samples, got some ice cream and bought some vegan t-shirts!
Around 4pm, some of the booths began to shut down and we were getting tired, so we left Vegfest. It was still really windy and rainy.
Outiside SECC |
We drove to the nearest Co-op store and bought some snacks, and beer. We went back to our flat and relaxed for a couple hours.
This is the only picture of the flat we got. |
They also had three of the cutest dogs, we seem to only have pictures of two of them though.
We enjoyed our time at their place and hopefully we will be able to visit them again soon!
We left her place around 1130pm because we wanted to check out one of Glasgow's many vegan pubs. We made our way to Stereo and had some drinks
City Centre at 230am |
We started walking along the river.
It was such a beautiful change from yesterdays weather.
HUGE puddle! |
We found our way back to the water, but did get yelled at by a scotswoman for jumping a fence. We were trapped, we could not find the way out!
We took the bridge across River Clyde and finally were on our way to Vegfest.
A lot of people showed up for day 2, which is wonderful to see. We went on search for food.
Korean Raw wrap. |
After we ate, we went to see a talk by Dr. Melanie Joy. She is an author of one of my favourite vegan books. "Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows".
We couldn't find the talk she did at Vegfest, but we found a really good talk that she's done at another event and posted it below for those of you who want to watch. The talk is called: "Melanie Joy - Carnism: The Psychology of Eating Meat"
We then got some food from the stall run by the many vegan pubs in Glasgow; the 78, Stereo, Mono, 13th note, and the Flying duck. Since it was the end of the fest all of their items were 2 for 1. We got 2 seitan burgers, 2 mushroom pasties, a cheese and onion pasty and a spinach pie. Score! We were sufficiently suffonsified you might say. We watched the band while we ate before we headed back to Birmingham.
We left Vegfest and walked back to the car
River Clyde |
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post and want to see more from VegFestUK, check out our post on "...down to Brighton Vegfest! yo!"
You guys got some amazing pics of Glasgow! Glad yo had a good time :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Craig! Glasgow is awesome, too bad you aren't back yet.
DeleteSo glad to have been part of your trip! Hopefully will see ypu again soon!!
ReplyDeleteGlad you were part of our trip too. It was lovely to finally meet you. We plan to be back soon, we will keep you posted. :)
DeleteIt sounds like you guys listened to some great presentations and had fun, too!
ReplyDeleteYeah it was fun, we saw some good talks and hung out with our friends.
DeleteI've been a vegetarian (well pescetarian now) for over 10 years, and I'm loving your food shots! I had no idea that Glasgow was such a haven for vegans! We'll have to check it out if we ever get to Scotland.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much. Definitely check it out.
DeleteI hadn't heard many positive stories from people visiting Glasgow to be honest so it was good to read your post. Some great pictures, you make Glasgow sound much better! ;)
ReplyDeleteYeah we didn't have any problems there and we had lots of fun. We're going back soon actually.
DeleteI'd like to know, what was in the Korean raw wrap and what do you use in a vegan white russian? Coconut milk?
ReplyDeleteI wish I had an answer for you but I'm not sure exactly what was in the wrap. I think there White Russians were likely with coconut milk though.
DeleteSuch a bummer than you had a bit of a bumpy experience at your AirBNB! At least it worked out in the end.
ReplyDeleteI've never been to a food convention - let alone a vegan orientated one (nor have I experienced a proper vegan meal) so it would have been really interesting for me! I didn't know Scotland was massive in the vegan industry. The food shots look absolutely delicious and you've got me hungry now!
Maybe I should check out one of these conventions and learn more about it :)
When we first travelled to Scotland back in 2011 we had our doubts about finding vegan food because we pictured meat and potatoes, haggis, deep fried chocolate bars, etc. Turned out there is Indian restaurants all over and lots of vegan pub food. There is even vegan haggis! We're heading back to Scotland soon.
DeleteI can't believe they even have vegan haggis!! Was it good? I love roadtrips, especially with good friends and good tunes. I haven't spent a lot of time in Glasgow, but if you haven't make sure to get up to the Isle of Skye!
ReplyDeleteVegan haggis was alright. I don't think we would eat it again. We have been over the bridge to the Isle of Skye but ran out of time last time we went. We are on our way there again in a few weeks though!
DeleteI had no idea there was such a huge Vegan following in Glasgow. The festival seemed like an interesting mixture of an indoor food fest and pro-vegan lectures. I've never witnessed anything like this. At times in my life I have been borderline meat-free but have never fully committed to it. I also find it quite fascinating to stumble across the theme of Vegan travel.
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading. I'm glad we could shed some light on this scene.
DeleteJust stumbled upon you blog and am quite amused of you being vegan while on the road. For someone who loves food, that might be a tough one from the start.
ReplyDeleteWe love food too! We seek out amazing vegan food everywhere we go.
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