THE annual Crab Fair event was held in Egremont this week.
Crowds of people from across West Cumbria gathered in Egremont to enjoy the festivities.
There is a range of attractions for visitors to enjoy including a fairground, live music, and also some traditional events that date back centuries.
These include the greasy pole, gurning, pipe smoking competition, and crab apple parade.
Chris Scott, the Crab Fair chairman, said: "It was an absolutely fantastic event from start to finish, with a record number of people that attended.
"Some of the highlights were the live music on Friday night on the main street, on Saturday morning there was the greasy pole, the horse parade, up on the top field we had Crab Fest and sports events, everything went as it should have."
Due to a limited budget this year, no major musical acts were booked to perform, but this allowed organisers to book talented local artists on the stages.
READ MORE: Egremont Crab Fair - the UK's oldest fair
The World Gurning Championships were also a major success. These are held each year in Egremont Market Hall.
Mr Scott continued: "Tommy Mattinson won the gurning for the 19th time, second place was Ding Dong Veg from Buckinghamshire, and third was Adrian from Coventry."
Chris said that the Crab Fair was cancelled twice due to the Covid pandemic. In 2022 they were also forced to quickly cancel the fair due to the death of Queen Elizabeth, which brought with it financial difficulty.
The committee managed to rebuild itself with last year's event and has gone from strength to strength with the 2024 fair, as it proved to be a major success.
READ MORE: Egremont Crab Fair: Gurning world champion shares skills with children
Mr Scott added: "I'd like to thank everyone who supported the Crab Fair, the amount of people who stopped committee members and wished us well is always appreciated. We're all volunteers and we give up a lot of our time to make the event possible.
"We're all proud of how the event went this year. Going forward we hope that we'll be able to put what we've earned into future events.
"We're hoping to build up our committee members and look for sponsorship which would make the fair bigger and better, with new events."
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