STAF (including ECMFA, ICGT, TAP, and all workshops) will take place at the College Court Conference Centre and Hotel in Leicester, UK.
Accommodation
Accommodation in College Court is available at the rate of £40 per night for STAF attendees.
Please book your room using the STAF’23 registration system.
Directions to Leicester
Leicester is located in the East Midlands of England and has excellent transport links.
The city’s nearest airport is East Midlands Airport (EMA), which serves a number of destinations across Europe via point-to-point (aka budget) airlines such as Ryanair. Frequent “Skylink” bus services connect the airport to Leicester city centre (more details).
Attendees needing long haul flights may find it more feasible to travel to Birmingham Airport (BHX) which is only one hour away from Leicester by car or 1hr30mins by train. If taking the latter, book your tickets from “Birmingham International” railway station, which is connected to the airport by the free “Air-Rail Link” shuttle trains. If connections to Birmingham Airport don’t quite work out, then consider searching for flights to any of the major airports serving London (e.g. Heathrow, Gatwick). Once you reach central London, direct trains to Leicester are available from St Pancras International railway station.
If part of your journey to Leicester involves a train, we strongly advise purchasing your rail ticket in advance. British trains are quite affordable if you book an “Advance” ticket that’s tied to a particular service, but can become inexplicably expensive if you buy a walk-up flexible fare on the day of travel. We recommend using the National Rail Enquiries website to search for train tickets (note that you will be redirected to a train operator’s website to purchase the ticket). Advance fares are only released around 12 weeks before the day of travel (depending on the operator), so if you only see full-fare tickets, please try searching again later.
Rail Strikes: the RMT Union has announced three days of rail strike action in July. Two of these dates (Thursday 20th July, Saturday 22nd July) may affect the travel plans of STAF participants. Please refer to this announcement on the National Rail website for more information, as well as the real-time journey planner for the latest timetable.
Directions to College Court
College Court is located in the Knighton suburb of Leicester. Detailed directions are available in this pamphlet.
Attendees arriving into Leicester railway station can either approach the taxi rank or catch the number 44 or 44A bus from stand EE (direction: South Wigston or Wigston Magna) to Northcote Road. These services are operated by Arriva Midlands according to this timetable. The simplest way to pay your bus fare is by tapping on and tapping off with a contactless credit/debit card or device.