April 20th I held a charity bake sale in Lush Colchester, as part of the "worldwide vegan bake sale" to raise funds for Tower Hill Stables Animal Sanctuary, in Asheldham, Essex. The bake sale was a huge success and all 180 cakes sold in less than 3 hours! (between 11am and 2pm). I am thrilled that kind hearted cake-lovers helped to raise £245.80 Tower Hill! I was overwhelmed by the turn out and support-some people were even buying boxes of 10 cakes at a time! One couple came all the way from Billericay, just to buy some cakes! The staff at Lush were lovely and gave me a really warm welcome (and bought their fair share of cakes too!) I spent 12 hours making lot's of different flavoured cupcakes, muffins, cookies, whoopie pies and cinnamon rolls. This is the second time I've participated in the world wide vegan bakesale, in 2011 I held another bakesale in Lush, which raised £157 for Animal Aid. This year I chose to support Tower Hill Stables because I follow them on Facebook and felt I wanted to help the good work they do. I was thrilled that the sanctuary owner, elite vegan marathon runner Fiona Oakes came along to support the event! (although all the cakes had sold out by the time she arrived!) It was lovely to meet Fiona. I've been a huge fan of hers for ages. (you could say she's one of my heroes!) I really appreciated her taking the time to visit Colchester She won the women's race at the North Pole marathon earlier this year (in temperatures of -28 c!) and came in third place overall, behind two male runners. She smashed the previous women's course record by 45 minutes! (along with her mascot- Percy bear, who also made an appearance at Lush!) Fiona runs these extreme marathons to raise awareness of veganism and to prove that you can excel on a plant based diet, and also to raise funds for her animal sanctuary, at which she cares for 400 rescued animals (including horses, sheep, cows, chickens, pigs and rescued dogs and cats). Fiona said she was really happy to see me promoting veganism through baking cakes, as a lot of people still seem to think being vegan means going without! She was also very appreciative of the effort I'd put in to raise money for her sanctuary, and said she'd be happy to help promote "ps..it's vegan!" in the future. |
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