Thousands attend Bungay's first ever food and drink street market

"Sublime smells" of various food options had guests spoilt for choice on Sunday at the Bungay Food and Drink Festival.

The forecast was unforgiving with heavy rain persistent all day.

Event organiser Didy Ward said: "I am delighted with how successful the event was, despite the rain.

"The smells generated from the food were sublime, circulating around the town.

"I am so proud of the wonderful quality of delightful food and drink which were available, such a staggering variety of the highest quality of local food and drink.

"Fortunately first thing in the morning it was dry when stall holders were arriving and setting up and dry when everybody was packing away at the end.

"The heavy rain throughout the course of a day only really impacted the demonstrations which we organised to be hosted at the Castle Bailey, and in the end we had to cancel one of the cookery demonstrations.

"After a bit of a slow morning, the street market easily had a couple thousand visitors over the course of the day."

Mrs Ward praised the event for flaunting Bungay's "charm".

"Bungay is a fantastic venue to host street events like this. Earsham Street is very charming but also very long, a big road to accommodate the volume of footfall.

"It is so special that we can close Earsham Street off for pedestrians with the businesses along the street still trading and part of it as well.

"The businesses and community really did unite for the event too and worked in tandem for it to be a success.

"For example, the Golf Club kindly made parking available for guests who then only had a short walk across the bridge to the market - it showed the strength of our community."

The date of next years Food and Drink Festival is yet to be confirmed, but Mrs Ward says it will be the autumn showpiece for the town as they welcome four events per season next year.

She said: "Moving forward from the success of this event, we plan to host a major event in every season next year.

"With the Food and Drink Festival to be hosted every October, the garden market in the spring, the Christmas market every December and the Bungay Black Shuck Festival returning in the summer with new ambitious and exciting plans."

There were performances and demonstrations outside of Bigod's Castle (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

Happy stall holders (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

Earsham Street was where the majority of stalls were positioned with over 2000 visitors attending the day (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

St Peter's Brewery is local to Bungay (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

The rain poured relentlessly but people and dogs were not phased (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

Dog walkers embraced the vibes at the food and drink festival (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

The pouring rain didn't put off visitors (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

Halloween is on the horizon (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

Dogs embraced the bad weather with their owners (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

There were guest speakers at a farming debate at the Bungay Fisher Theatre on Saturday (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)

There was food on offer outside Bigod's Castle (Image: Bungay Food and Drink Festival)