MillCon 2

To summarise:

Mike is 60 on August 5th
Anne is still miffed at missing the last MillCon

So! MillCon 2 will be happening!!! Here are the details:

Dates

Friday to Sunday 25-27th August 2023. That's the Bank Holiday weekend, obviously.

We intend to do stuff through into Sunday evening, and have ourselves the Monday for other things.

Attending?

If you would like to come (or watch online) please fill out this form.

Programming and Guests

Guest of Honour

Our guest of honour is Edwin Brady, who also goes by JT Steam for musical purposes on the Internet. To quote his Bandcamp bio, he "...is an academic by day who writes nerdy folk songs by night with an ever growing collection of ukuleles." Edwin entertained everyone at MillCon 1 with a collection of brilliantly funny original songs, and we're more than delighted to have him back.

Programming

Still TBFinalised, but we can promise you a couple workshops (one from Valerie, and Mike's Stringed Instrument Petting Zoo (with help from anyone else with interestingly different guitar-like instruments!)). There will also be concert sets, and it's Not Too Late to let us know you'd like one either on the form or by email.

Location

The Mill House, 1379 Lincoln Road, Werrington, Peterborough PE4 6LT

Venue Details

We have three 'function' rooms available:

The Lounge - Sofas, chairs, space to natter for ten or a dozen. PS5, TV.
The Music Room - Seats about 20 for concerts or a filk circle. This room will very likely be live streamed for concerts.
The Studio - Outside in the workshop wing. Depending on numbers, we may use this for overflow music (again, seats about 20), or just make it available for folks who want to play board games. There's a TV here, so we may stream the Music Room to it (as well as the Lounge).

Accessibility

Sadly, not very. The Mill House dates from 1860-odd, has very steep stairs, low doorways and no two rooms are quite on the same level.

WiFi

Yes. With better bandwidth and more IP addresses than most hotels!

Potential Hazards

We have three cats and several Amazon Echos. We apologise if you are allergic to the former: we will keep the Studio cat-free but cannot guarantee the rest of the house.

The house dates from the 1860s - as such no two adjacent rooms are quite on the same level, and a number of the connecting doorways are lower than tall people's heads.

Accomodation

There will be no spare beds at the Mill House, sadly: we're using up all the available for either event space or hiding stuff away. There are some local fen who may be able to offer bed space, but if not...

Hotel

The Premier Inn, Peterborough North, is just over a mile away - 5 mins drive or 20-25 mins walk. Currently their prices are a bit more than they were in February (about £90 fully refundable a night for a twin): their group booking deal turns out to be worse than this, for some bizarre reason. The hotel is disability-friendly and has free parking. We hope that folks will be able to arrange car-pooling to and from the hotel, and will run an (electric) shuttle in the event that doesn't work out for anyone.

Both the Mill House and the hotel are on the number 1 bus route from the station. Note that on a northbound bus you either have to get off by the church and walk half a mile, or stay on for another 10 mins and go round the loop and back down Lincoln Road (as a southbound bus) to get to us. The southbound stop (Werrington Mill) is literally outside our front door.

Food

Breakfast

You're on your own :D

Daytime food - Sat and Sun

We'll lay on snacks, bread, cheese, other fillings, tea, coffee, soft drinks etc during the day for folks to graze on as and when.

Evening - Sat and Sun

Plans will depend on numbers: we may do the worlds' largest spag bol in carnivorous and vegetarian versions, or we may scare the living daylights out of an Uber Eats or Deliveroo driver or two, but watch this space.

Membership

We would appreciate a donation of £5 for Saturday, £5 for Sunday (pay us on the day), purely to cover shopping for food, drinks etc. Our rough estimate is we can probably host 40-50 people without creaking at the seams.

COVID

If you are displaying symptoms of anything flu-, cold- or COVID-like, we would ask you not to attend.

Parking

No parking on the Mill House 'car park' down Sharma Leas - please park on Lincoln Road or Salisbury Road.