Thursday August 13^th 2026

Welcome to Walesby Forest!

It’s been an interesting build-up to this year’s festival. It’s taking place against the backdrop of the fifth heatwave of the summer, which is an important reminder of the need to tackle climate change, in part by reducing our meat consumption as a society.

It’s also taking place up north, making the easiest way for me to get there to be to go via my mum’s house for a few days first. So let’s begin at the beginning.

I finished work an hour early on Tuesday, then loaded up the car and headed straight to Tamworth, arriving at about 6:30 PM and just in time to tick off some City Strides in my hometown, By the time that I was back home and unpacked, it was already gone nine, and I was up early again the following morning.

That would take us to Wednesday August 12^th, when we went for a Woodings family dinner ahead of my mum’s birthday. We picked my uncle Carl up and went for coffee (of the Costa variety), then to the Greyhound for lunch. It was an early start on the vegan hijinks for me because I was off my diet (if you can call generally eating healthily a diet), so I could order what I wanted.

That ended up being a cheese-less vegetable pizza, fresh from their wood-fired pizza oven, along with a side of chilli fries and then a Pokemon-themed mocktail to wash it down with because they didn’t have any vegan desserts. I was happy though, because it came with a Pokemon card.

 

Professor Turo’s Scenario

It’s a kind of Magic,

the gathering mana

pooled like an unknown element,

a pleasant elephant,

or maybe an electric rat

ta ta

with a lightning tail,

I’d like to take a peek

off the boat

before you Rocket.

 

Listen,

card sharks &

game freaks,

they’ve hustled trainers

since I was just

a sapling,

I was a ten-year-old

dodecahedron,

I got on the

rhombus.

 

That’s how to get Pikachu on;

you poke him on.

 

She said she wants to Rhydon

my Weedle;

she said I make her

Squirtle.

 

I’d catch her,

but she’d hurt herself

in her confusion.

 

There’s plenty of mock

in this tail.

 

We went back to my gran’s place after that, but given that the conversation inevitably turned to politics, Reform and Anne Widdecombe’s funeral, the less said about that, the better.

We had a solar eclipse that evening, and my initial plan had been to go for a run as it happened, but it was fgar too hot and so I ended up going out after dark instead. I didn’t watch the eclipse, either. It’s always seemed to me that you get a better view of it on the TV anyway. I’m pretty sure that during the total eclipse of 1999, I was playing Illusion of Time on the Super Nintendo at my dad’s place on Victoria Road.

You know, the house where my bedroom was a converted airing cupboard and I used to get electric shocks from the lightbulb hanging down over the bed.

I slept early that night, then got up early ish on the Thursday morning to do some more City Strides in Tamworth while I could. It’s much easier to tick off new streets when they’re two miles away instead of 15. It was still 28 degrees at 10:30 AM when I finished, though.

I just about had time for a quick shower, and then I got a lift to the station from my mum so that I could go and meet Shay, who was travelling up from High Wycombe to meet me. It was her first time catching the train by herself, and so she felt very proud of herself and very accomplished.

I met her at Moor Street and we headed off to the Kitty Café, which I’ve wanted to visit for a while. It’s a lot bigger inside than it looks, and it also has air con, which is a plus when the weather’s like this. £9 each seemed like a lot to get in, but then I suppose the actual prices weren’t too bad. We had a wrap and some fries each, plus a reasonably priced mocktail, and I think it came to about £25 in total. The cats were adorable and seemed well looked after, and so it was definitely worth the visit.

We missed our train, though.

It actually turned out that we could still have caught it because of how late it ended up running. In fact, they were running late all day, so when we went to catch the next one, it didn’t show up, and the one after that was 15 minutes later.

Still, we eventually made it back to Tamworth at about 2:20 PM and my mum picked us up and took us back to hers, where we loaded up the car and then headed straight off. We had to stop off at Sainsbury’s first to pick up the tent, and there was only one person working there. It must have taken half an hour to get in and out.

Luckily, the drive here wasn’t too bad, and so we arrived on site at about 5:15 PM. I was supposed to be volunteering on the Vegan Runners stall at five and so I missed that, but on the plus side, it didn’t take long to get in because there wasn’t a queue. They had a cursory look through our stuff and then we were in, although I couldn’t help noticing that it was the first year where they didn’t give us any freebies.

The Vegan Runners encampment wasn’t far from the entrance and so we were soon setting up the tent, with the temperature somewhere around 34 degrees. This year, we have Tent A, which is a pop-up tent that’s just big enough for our air bed, and then Tent B, which has all of our stuff in. While we were setting up, someone came over to complain that we hadn’t left enough room for their friend’s guy ropes, but I was just confused as to why they hadn’t set them up in the first place. Shay said they pulled a face at me behind my back and muttered something as they walked away, which is… nice.

The tent system seems to be working well so far, although we’ve had some visitors overnight in the form of a horde of ants, which I guess will now just be here for the duration.

We haven’t seen too many Vegan Runners yet, although we bumped into Jeff and Huiyan at about 9 PM. They’d just arrived and were in the process of setting up their tent. We actually had a relatively chill day, although we made a few trips to the arena and grabbed everything from the car.

I’m a little bit underwhelmed with the festival this year. I don’t think there’s as much choice with the food vendors, and some of my favourites aren’t here (e.g. No Catch, Doner Summer). The speaker line-up is also the worst I’ve known it to be. The venue seems okay and an improvement on last year, but the whole thing just somehow feels smaller.

But anyway. Shay says I need to be more positive.

For our first trip into the arena, we pretty much made a beeline for Vegan Planet, which is one of our favourites. They’re a Chinese food place with a restaurant in London, and they’re always worth a visit. They didn’t disappoint.

It wasn’t until our second visit that we managed to find all of the non-food stalls, and it was dark by then and so a lot of them were closed. We still picked up a few goodies though, including a glittery silver fanny pack for Shay.

I made one last visit that evening for some dinner, though I went on my own because Shay was already in bed. I grabbed some hash browns with a nacho cheese dip.

We slept okay, all things considering, although the Vegan Hikers were singing along to pop songs until 1 AM and keeping us all awake. I’d thought about joining them as a hiker, but they annoyed me so much that it put me off. It sounded like they had an argument with security when they finally asked them to be quiet, too.

Did they not read the rules? They explicitly said not to bring sound systems.

 

Take a Hike

The difference

between hiking and running

is more than just

how long it’ll take

to get from Point A

to Point B.

 

It’s more than just

how you carb load

and whether you wear Brooks

or Hoka,

and it’s not just

which apps you use

and who you follow.

Someone said

runners run

to get away from it all,

especially those who favour trails

over roads.

 

I guess hikers hike

to keep people awake

who aren’t as young

as them.

 

Friday August 14^th 2026

We slept in until about 9 AM this morning because once it started getting hot, we could just open the tent and let a little breeze in. I wrote in here for a while as I drank my energy drink, and then we headed into the arena for food and stuff.

Shay started healthily with a fruit bowl while I went for a kebab from What the Pitta. Then we went to Vegan Antics for cake, before taking a further wander around the arena and indulging in some shopping, as well as spending some time in the jungle.

 

Suntan Lotion

It’s the less-familiar

sticky,

like shift

shift

shift

shift

shift

all gone

out of

CTRL.

 

The second skin

protecting against the elements,

 those pleasant elephants

all over again,

only thank the heavens

and praise the lord

there’s no factor 50

pocket monster,

that’s a big fat

nyan tick.

 

I must be growing up

because the younger me

wasn’t free

to wear sunscreen,

he hated the feeling

of being sticky.

 

Now 37

like a compilation CD,

I’m not Baz Luhrmann

but I’d rather not risk

getting skin cancer.

 

Although it’s more just

I don’t want to burn,

I won’t go out

in a blaze of glory.

 

Sticky skin,

it is,

then. 

 

I volunteered at the Vegan Runners stall for an hour or so in the afternoon to make up for missing my shift on Thursday, and then I used the little bit of downtime to get a tattoo of a cat in a box on my right leg, which I’m very happy with. It’ll just poke out of the top of my socks if I wear them low.

It also means that I now have a tattoo on each of my four limbs, which is good news if I ever get murdered, dismembered and disposed of. Although maybe I should get a face tattoo, just in case.

Shay’s getting ready to go and dance to some drum ‘n’ bass in the Jungle, but that’s not really my thing and you can hear it from the tent anyway. I think I’m going to put my feet up for a bit and then go for my run at about 8 PM when it’s hopefully a little cooler.

Update: I fell asleep, then got the shit scared out of me because the government sent out an emergency hot weather alert that meant everyone’s phones all went off simultaneously with a siren. It was a hell of a way to wake up. I thought Trump had bombed the Russians. It would have been bad enough if I’d just been alone at home, but out here it was just echoing out all across the fields.

I went to Hogless Roast for one of their burgers and some of their tater tot, but I didn’t think it was as good as it has been in previous years. Later, I went for my run and ended up getting lost in the woods because some of the paths I was planning on heading down had been fenced off. In the end, I did 7K instead of 5K, but I just about made it back before it got dark.

Shay wanted ice cream, so I went back to the arena with her so that she could get some and then swung back through the Jungle for a shower. I’d heard a few people complain about the water pressure, but I didn’t think it was too bad, considering we’re at a festival. It was enough to cool me own and to get me clean, at least.

That’s pretty much it for Friday. Let’s move on to Saturday. 

 

Clean

I guess

I’m a god

or sitting next

2-1,

it’s weird

to be clean

when nobody else

is.

 

This extends

to substances,

although I know

I need to kick

the energy drinks.

 

I’ve seen dirt

and what it does,

I’ve chained up Alice

and hid myself

from what is wrong for me.

 

Meanwhile,

out in the sunshine,

there are skies of blue

and a sea of green,

it’s the black

and the green

of the plant-based

runners.

 

They all need showers,

too.

  

In the forests,

the atheists pray

for no rain

and the faithful

turn their chairs around

for an even sunburn.

I like to think

I’m smart enough

to wait for the evening,

when the water pressure’s high

and the dirty are happy

to remain so.

 

And the queues

for the coffee stalls

have moved across the fields

towards the bars. 

 

Saturday August 15^th 2026

My alarm went off at 7:30 AM, and I managed to crawl out of bed before the second one went off at 7:45. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to get ready and I was on the coach to Sherwood Pines parkrun before I knew it.

It was a beautiful course, and a pleasure to be there with maybe 300+ Vegan Runners. There was green and black everywhere you looked. It was a little hilly and traily underfoot, but I still somehow made it around in a new PB of 20:17. Just 18 more seconds to go until I bag myself my first sub-20.

Shay wasn’t at the tent when I got back, so I headed to the arena for another doner chipbox from What the Pitta, which I ate at the education tent while listening to talks from Anonymous for the Voiceless and then a talk by Tobias Leenaert on Animal Advocacy: Between Despair and Hope. But it’s starting to get hot again, so I think I’m going to head back to the tent for a lie down.

Update: It ended up being too hot to even do that, so we went to the shower block to refresh ourselves and Shay grabbed some hash browns. I managed a nap after that because it left me a little cooler, and then we returned to the arena via the medical tent so that Shay could get a splinter removed. We picked up some food from Vegan Planet too, then headed off to see Juliet from Viva.

 

Juliet Gellatley

• “Why on earth are adult human beings drinking the breast milk of another species, long after they’ve been weaned?”
• “People aren’t stupid, they’ve just been told a story with the essential facts removed.”
• 330,000 dairy cows are sent to slaughter each year.
• The dairy industry borrows the credibility of athletes to suggest that they’re only successful because of their dairy consumption.
• We’re encouraged to believe that everyone in Britain has always drank milk. They haven’t. For 97% of our total existence, nobody consumed milk or dairy products.
• Fresh dairy only became commonplace with pasteurisation, refrigeration and transportation towards the end of the 1800s.
• Almond milk was preferred to “normal” milk during the medieval period because it didn’t cause sickness or disease. We have recipes dating back to the 1300s.
• Cow’s milk is for getting a calf to triple its weight within a year.
• Human beings are one of the slowest growing mammals in the world.
• You can’t give cow’s milk to a human baby until it’s a year old. It’s unsuited to their needs. That’s why it’s reformulated before it’s given to humans.
• It has to be taken apart and rebuilt. It’s not faulty, it’s just designed for a different species.
• “Where will I get my calcium?” “Where does a cow get its calcium? From plants.”
• “Our bones didn’t suddenly appear when someone first approached a cow with a bowl and unreasonable confidence.”
• Calcium matters, but you don’t need milk to provide it.
• Imagine being milked for 22 litres of milk every day, day after day.
• It’s legal to have 400 million pus cells per litre of milk in the UK. In fact, the dairy industry couldn’t exist without that.
• Cows can live into their thirties, but dairy cows are slaughtered at five.
• What happens to the calves? The female ones replace their mothers, and the males are either killed immediately as an “unwanted” byproduct or raised for beef.
• Around one in five dairy cows in the UK never get to feel grass.
• Countries with the highest consumption of milk also have the highest levels of osteo problems.
• The dairy industry has money and influence, but it fears knowledge and information.
• “The dairy industry has billions of pounds. We have you.”

 

We ended up sticking around at the main stage, first for Lou Sanders (hilarious) and then for Mic the Vegan (super informative, as usual). We stopped off for a coffee while we were at it.

 

Mic the Vegan

• For many people, the science doesn’t matter.
• “There’s always a doctor who agrees with the insane claims people are making.”
• It’s easy to find a doctor who tells you what you want to hear.
• Carnivore diet emissions are through the roof.
• Carnivore diet followers rely on their own mythology, such as when they talk about oxalate purification. It’s like blaming negative orgones.
• Anti-vegans clearly never care about vitamin deficiencies because people who follow the carnivore diet are deficient in all sorts, from Vitamin D to Calcium.
• Carnivore diet ailments: scurvy, gout, keto crotch, low testosterone, infectious diseases.
• It makes you unable to produce collagen.
• Nutrient deficiencies, expensive, eating disorder behaviours, pseudoscience… what people say are vegan problems are actually carnivore problems.
• The author of the Carnivore Code quit the carnivore diet because his testosterone was so low.

 

Earthling Ed

• He saw an interview where someone said they don’t eat kale and someone else said, “you must be really healthy then”. Barmy.
• Influencers “turn their back” on veganism once it no longer serves them.
• “We have to find a way to live on this non-vegan world and we shouldn’t feel guilt or shame for nurturing other parts of who we are.”
• “Change is not a straight line. Progress for any issue has never been one foot in front of the other the whole way. But change continues in spite of that.”
• Animals aren’t numbers on a spreadsheet.
• “Goodness is happening even in this crazy, disturbed world.”
• Acceptance isn’t condoning. It’s acknowledging that we’re doing what we can do but we still need to exist in the world.
• “People are complicated and frustrating, but…”
• The animal agriculture industry can’t defend itself. It’s easy to make big, sweeping statements. Saying pig farming is ethical is easy. Saying that gassing them to death is ethical? Not so much.
• “We’re not trying to convince people of something that they don’t already believe.”
• People don’t think they have selective outrage. They don’t realise that it’s been prescribed to them.
• People believe that if we mistreated animals, something would be done.
• Our job is to show people that they already believe in veganism. They just need to be consistent with their thoughts, beliefs and actions.

 

Zack Polanski

• “We are more powerful in our many than the dairy and meat industry are in their few.”
• 85% of farmed animals in this country are in factory farms.
• “We must end factory farming.” Finally, a politician who gets it.
• Juliet: “We’ve got a leader here, finally, who speaks up for the animals.” Zack: “I was vegan way before I even considered the Green Party.”
• When you read the science and the research, most people would agree that a vegan, plant-based diet is the future.
• If protests didn’t work, people wouldn’t feel the need to ban it.
• We need to recognise that ending cruel industry can cost jobs. But that doesn’t mean ignoring cruelty because it would cost jobs. We need to re-route the jobs instead.
• Governments should subsidise things that are good for people and not subsidise things that are bad for them.
• The government needs to wake up to the damage that’s been done by carbon emissions, not just from animal agriculture, and stop kicking the can down the road.
• There’s nothing normal about inseminating a cow so you can drink its milk in your tea.
• There are two options: there’s the impossible and there’s the inevitable.

 

After Mic, it was straight through to the finish line with Macca B, Earthling Ed and JME.

Macca B was fantastic, and he only seems to get better with age. His backing band was extremely tight, but I was particularly taken with how well-rounded the bass sound was. The keyboard player was pretty good, too. It’s not that he was virtuoso, but rather that he was able to do a lot with a little. Then there’s Macca B as the frontman, who always delivers a cracking performance.

Earthling Ed’s talk was interesting too, although the crowd was so big that I had to make do with sitting outside the tent. JME’s set was okay, but he also seemed out of practice and started losing his voice. I thought he was better the first time I saw him.

For dinner, I stopped off at a place that I think might have been called Mel’s, although I couldn’t swear to it. It was another variation on loaded fries, this time with seitan and buffalo sauce. I followed that up with Biscoff tiramisu, which I believe was the first time I’ve ever had it. It was freakin’ delicious.

I was ready for bed after that because I’m old. I also had to get back up at half seven to go and volunteer at junior parkrun.

 

16^th August 2026

I’ve been planning on making my own way to junior parkrun, but then I bumped into all of the other Vegan Runners by the car park and so I tagged along with them instead. We did 2K on the way there and then 6K on the way back, which meant that I was able to continue my streak and it also meant that once I made it back to the festival site, I was ready to take it easy.

There were only about fifteen kids at juniors, but that’s okay. They all seemed to enjoy themselves.

Back at the festival site, I just about had time to grab some mac ‘n’ cheese followed by some Biscoff pancakes, although I was a little disappointed by both. The mac ‘n’ cheese just wasn’t as good as the jalapeno mac and cheese that I make, and while the pancakes were okay, I wanted doughnuts but they were off the menu and I didn’t find out until after I’d already queued.

 

The Happy Pear

• Fermentation is a part of life
• Lemonade recipe: 100 grams of sugar, six lemons, 1 litre of water
• There’s wild yeast on the skin of every organic fruit, so they need to be unwaxed, organic lemons
• Of that sugar, 90% goes to feed the yeast
• The two secret ingredients of fermentation or time and temperature
• Mix it all together and leave it for three to five days (bulk ferment stage)
• Then sieve it and pour it into a bottle for the secondary ferment stage
• This secondary stage develops carbonation and acidity
• Leave it for 1-2 days
• In the UK, 55% of all calories consumed are ultra-processed
• Cooking is a gateway to a better way of life
• Everyone does mindfulness these days. Why not cooking?
• You can live for months without food, a week without water, but only five minutes without oxygen
• Movement is central to a good life
• If you get five hours’ sleep or less, you’re going to eat 3-500 more calories per day
• The most important thing for a long life is community and social connection
• Community = common unity
• Check out the Happy Pear podcast
• It takes around 40 hours to make a trusted friend
• We’re all the same. We’re all walking around with invisible signs that say, “Please love me.”
• Type 1 happiness = “I’ve got a croissant.” Type 2 happiness = “I’ve just overcome my fears and climbed a mountain.”
• Vulnerability connects.
• If you get four hugs a day, you’re existing. If you get eight hugs a day, you’re maintaining. If you get twelve hugs a day, you’re living the dream.
• When we hug, we tend to hug with our right sides, not our left. It protects our hearts.”

 

Then it was time to see Zack Polanski, who fortunately wasn’t disappointing. Pairing him up with Juliet Gellatley of Viva was a great idea, and their Q&A was almost as powerful as his talk was.

I wanted to pre-empt some of the faff tomorrow morning, so I took a trolley load of stuff to the car and packed up what I could of my bits and bobs, then came back to the main arena. I ended up watching a talk by the Happy Pear in which they shared a few life lessons while showing you how to make fermented, probiotic lemonade. It was very entertaining and now I want to give the lemonade a go. It doesn’t sound too tricky, but it won’t work if I accidentally get unwaxed lemons. I might see what they have at the farm shop.

 

Moby

• People ask him where he gets his energy from. He gets it from the fact that he’s been vegan for over 30 years.
• “Every day, I wake up and ask myself, ‘What can I do to end the apocalypse for animals?’”
• He sees his animal rights activism as his life’s work. Music is just something he does.
• Moby was friends with David Bowie and introduced Lou Reed to the concept of veganism.
• He sees his tattoos as conversation starters. “It’s amazing to me how respectful people are.” They lead to respectful conversations. He says, “I’m glad to be covered in advertisements for veganism and animal rights.”
• “I loved the animals I grew up with. Humans scared me.”
• Every being has the desire to avoid pain and suffering.
• Throughout history, everything horrible has involved tribalism. Lynching. The holocaust. It’s almost like you stop thinking and just blindly believe the tribe.
• Today, people often don’t have any meaning in their lives beyond what tribalism brings.
• Look at the number of people who are afraid to go vegan because of what people might think. But history has shown us that sacrificing our values for tribalism is a bad idea.
• “Anybody who does anything in public is going to be on the receiving end of negativity.”
• You can be hated just for showing up. You don’t even have to do anything.
• We’re all experts at feeling sorry for ourselves. Take one look at a dairy cow being separated from its child and it puts things into perspective.
• Remember, social media is full of bots. There’s a good chance that you’re arguing with a bot.
• “You are about a lot of things, but animals are your number one. Why?” Moby: “1) The sheer size of it. 2) Even if there weren’t any animals involved, it would still be the worst industry out there.”
• “Sentient beings should be allowed to live their own life. It’s that simple.”
• “I don’t have to like an animal to want it to live its own life. Pigs can be assholes. That shouldn’t impact their ability to live their own lives. We can’t only extend animal rights to the animals we like.”
• We live in an anthropo-centric world. But our significance doesn’t actually exist. Why should it be anthropo-centric?
• We’re waging war on nature and the universe because it doesn’t validate us. It’s indifferent to us. And we HATE that.
• The thing that broke him when he looked into the eyes of a pig wasn’t the pain or the suffering. It was the confusion, that question of “why are you doing this to me?”
• What can we do to move the needle towards a better, more compassionate future?
• To begin with, activists are usually angry, but it’s when they get calm and strategic that they make a real difference. It comes back to, “Are we helping animals?” Otherwise, it might be making you feel good without actually moving the needle.
• We know who the enemy is. When we fight amongst ourselves, they win.

 

Well, I’m now back from Vegan Camp Out, but I’ll do my best to wrap things up here and to cover what I got up to. I might struggle to remember what food stands I visited though, so if in doubt, assume I went to Vegan Planet.

Oh, and I also made a crossword, which was fun.

 

Dane’s Crossword

 

Across

1. ___________ yeast ,vegan fairy dust (11)

5. Friendly pollinators (4)

6. A more polite word for the lies spread by the dairy and meat industry (5)

9. Once you go vegan, you’ll never be the ____ (4)

10. Sometimes in short supply when your social media algorithm is full of people saying “bacon tho” (4)

12. Adopt, don’t shop for these (3)

13. If a doe is a deer, a female deer, this is a note to follow so (2)

15. Juliet _________, founder of Viva (9)

16. If you follow a whole-food, plant-based diet, you have a healthy one of these (5)

18. A type of plant-based milk (3)

21. A little green man who thinks vegan you should go (4)

22. It’s legal to have hundreds of millions of cells of this in every litre of cow’s milk (3)

23. Purveyors of organic dog meat (7)

24. A useful tool for keeping an eye on factory farms (5)

25. Seitan makes for a great alternative to this (3)

27. A female sheep (3)

28. An acronym that’s another name for a factory farm (4)

29. An orange vegetable (6)

30. A dog and the place they’re killed in (3)

31. All you need is ____ (4)

32. Glands that get exploited (7)

33. The addictive compound in cheese (7)

 

Down

1. Vegan for the _______ (7)

2. Something you rarely find from animal agriculture industry spokespeople (5)

3. Vegan cake makers (4)

4. Animals deserve a little _______ instead of erasure (7)

7. A modern horror story (7)

8. This is needed if we’re going to act to avoid irreversible climate change (5)

11. Deliciously ____, food blogger (4)

14. A singular muscle built from plant protein (2)

17. What you shout if you see someone mistreating an animal (2)

19. Eating animals makes you one of these (7)

20.  What we’re all fighting for (7)

22. Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew (8)

23. The sun provides this (6)

26. A vegan activist that could be turned into a band with the addition of an American strip (4)

29. This crossword was created at Vegan ____ Out (4)

 

After the Happy Pear, I went to listen to Moby speak and managed to get a good position at the side of the tent, where I could sit in my chair and watch while scribbling in my notebook. I’ve always had mixed feelings about Moby, but I was very impressed. He was arguably one of my highlights of the weekend.

I met up with Shay after that to see Diane Morgan, but it was very disappointing because she didn’t make it to the site and dialled in via Zoom instead. They said that there were problems with the trains and that they tried to send a taxi but couldn’t make it work, but I smell bullshit. It’s not like with Tash Peterson when she couldn’t get an entry visa due to her activism.

We couldn’t get close enough to hear what Morgan was saying, although it seemed to just be a fairly banal Q&A, but given that we’d made the effort to get there, we stayed around anyway. It was definitely the most underwhelming session of the festival, though.

After that, there are only a few more acts to talk about. First off, we went to get some food, and while Shay was queuing for hot water from the coffee place, we overheard Delilah Bon on the music stage, and she was so good that we went to watch the rest of her set. She was probably the most pleasant and serendipitous surprise of the festival.

Then we had Henning Wehn in the main tent, who I thought was excellent. I’ve always enjoyed his humour and thought he was on particularly good form. I saw him on Monday morning too, walking around the stalls. It was good to hear that he attended the entire festival, unlike some people (*cough* Diane Morgan *cough*).

We followed that with a trip to see Molly from Elwood’s Organic Dog Meat, who was super engaging thanks to her idiosyncratic approach to presenting. She stayed in character throughout and it was more like a play or a piece of performance art than a talk. Good stuff.

Afterwards, we went for a final mooch around the stools, and I also picked up some pizza from Crust Daddy and some fish and chips from Saving Nemo. Both were pretty good, though not S-tier, and I was glad to tick them both off as I’d been meaning to try them. Then to the tent, and bed!

 

Mothman

I am the Mothman;

watch as I land on the page

and get i      nth   eway.

 

Monday 17^th August 2026

I’d set my alarm for 8:30 AM, but I woke up before it went off and headed straight to the Vegan Runners stand, where I was helping Peter out for an hour or so. I just about had time to get a coffee, then chatted to a few visitors for a while before Shay came to collect me and we went to grab some breakfast.

Alas, What the Pitta had already left and a lot of places weren’t open, so I went back to good old Vegan Planet.

Then it was time to go home.

We’d already packed most of the car, but it took two more trips to get the last few bits done. The drive actually wasn’t too bad, thanks in part to the stop off at my mum’s place in Tamworth to drop some stuff off and to pick up my computer and a few other bits. Then we just had to head down the M42 and the M40.

We left the festival site at about 10:30 and got back just after three. Not bad!

And that, as they say, is that. Another year over, almost as quickly as it started. Now bring on 2027!

 

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