Ludlow Food Festival crowd is a record-breaker

Organisers of the festival, which ran from Friday until Sunday, said they would be 'amazed' if visitor numbers did not eclipse last year's total of 19,000. The exact numbers are still being calculated.

Festival director Beth Heath said early indications also showed local businesses which were among the 160 food and drink producers which ran stalls at the event had also received a financial boost.

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She said: "It went very, very well. We are still pulling all the numbers together but I would be amazed if this year was not a record breaker for the festival.

"Last year we had about 19,000 attend the festival across the weekend, this year we have had more than 20,000.

"I've spoken to local businesses attending the show and they said profits have been boosted by about 25 per cent.

"Coopers Gourmet Sausage Rolls based in Shrewsbury sold 3,500 sausage rolls on Saturday alone. Some exhibitors had run out of food by 11am on Sunday because they had not predicted it would be so busy.

"We had queues coming into the festival - I think we must have had 8,000 to 10,000 on the Saturday alone."

Some of the traders and stallholders at the festival worked through the night on Friday after selling out of stock during the day.

On Saturday people queued down Mill Street to sign up for one of the 2,000 sausage trail places on offer while 1,000 tickets for the ale trail were also sold.

Mrs Heath said visitors had come from as far away as Australia and added this year's festival had been the greatest staged in the event's 18-year history. She thanked all the visitors and traders but reserved special praise for her army of volunteers.

"I'd like to take the opportunity to thank more than 120 local volunteers who have sacrificed their time and energy to help make the festival a success", said Mrs Heath.

"They were there at the weekend and yesterday helping to clear up. Without them this festival would not take place."