Vegan Runners UK will be returning to the Sachas Hotel, centre of Manchester on 17 October, a venue where we were present in April 2013 and there was a huge turnout from the public. On this occasion as you may know, the festival has been spread over four venues with the main stall holders at the central venue at the hotel. For details visit www.northernveganfestival.com. The festival is open 10am – 6pm.
Peter Simpson our stallholder and clothing secretary will be travelling up from Milton Keynes by train on the Friday and planning to stay at the nearby YHA as in 2013. Last time he struggled on the stall by himself as there were few members in the region, now that has changed over the past year or so, he will be hoping a few of you will be keen to help. Peter will be behind the stall for most of the festival, he just needs the occasional quick break. He doesn’t want to take up too much of your time at the festival as you would naturally wish to look around, attend talks, films, socialise, etc. If you wish to help let Peter know via the website contact form (Clothing or Festival Stalls) and it would be helpful if you could select a timeslot e.g. 11am – 1pm, 1pm – 3pm, 3pm – 5pm or the hour preferred. The busy times such as lunch period / early afternoon are when we need the most cover i.e. 12pm – 3pm or possibly 11am – 4pm.
The festival is on from 10am – 6pm and Peter will be setting up as early as possible subject to arrival time from the YHA. The quantity of club stock will be limited due tro travel by public transport. The club will also only be selling the clothing to new or existing members due to the club’s policy change in May this year. If you have any personal orders for the stall please inform Peter in advance, although there is no guarantee they will be in stock prior to the event. Currently we are out of stock of medium green and large black hoodies. Some sale items are no longer in stock i.e. youth black hoodie, medium premium cotton t-shirt, large black sweatshirt and men’s lycra 6” large black shorts.
The festival stall is an opportunity to build-up the local group, currently we do not have an official local contact as far as I am aware. There will be the usual opportunity to build-up a mailing list from the stall, some will be from outside the region and I will respond to the new contacts after the festival, focussing mostly on the contacts in the Greater Manchester region. Parkruns are a good starting point for members and contacts, many of you will be running parkruns, some on the day of the festival. If you have ideas where members can meet for training in Manchester or nearby on a more regular basis do let Peter know in advance.
If volunteering on the stall is not for you but you plan to attend, Peter and other volunteers will obviously be pleased to meet you at the stall. Lots of members visited the earlier stall at the Leeds ‘Great Yorkshire Festival’ in June including one or two on this list.
If your have club kit, it would useful to wear it on the day to help us meet-up. We would not suggest just wearing shorts and vest!
Peter Simpson
VRUK Stallholder
