Rain, wind put an end to CornFest

Three weeks' worth of rain in one day led to the UK's biggest sweetcorn festival being called off in Pagham.
By The Newsroom
Published 8th Sep 2008, 12:00 BST
Updated 7th Jun 2018, 17:43 BST

The latest biannual CornFest was scrapped by bosses at Barfoots of Botley the day before it was due to take place.

The company's directors were meeting yesterdayto discuss how to recover from the scrapping of the community occasion.

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Managing director Graham Young said: "We could decide to hold it later on in September or put it on next year, out of its usual two-yearly rotation. It could be that we decide to hold CornFest next September."

The latest of the fundraising family occasions was planned for last Saturday. But the preceeding day's horrendously wet and windy weather meant it could not have safely gone ahead.

Mr Young said 1.85ins of rain fell on the company's farm on Pagham Road last Friday (September 5).

That deluge added to an already saturated ground to make conditions unsuitable for the large number of people expected to go along.

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Bad weather was also forecast for last Saturday to potentially worsen the poor conditions.

"If we had allowed CornFest to proceed, we would have been very likely to end up with cars being bogged down in the car park and fields.

"We also had phone calls from people at other events on the Friday and they were telling us that they were a disaster because of the conditions," he explained.

"It was a very sad situation for us. An awful lot of people had put in an awful lot of work to make the latest CornFest a success.

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"But a few of us came to the farm on Saturday just to see what conditions were like.

"We decided that the right decision had been taken '“ nobody was harmed, nobody was stuck and there were no cars sliding around. That was the important thing."

CornFest was intended to be a celebration of the popular vegetable. Star of the show was intended to be Bob Cob.

Among the planned attractions were tractor and trailer rides, a food village, farmers' market, arts and crafts area, live music and lots of children's activities.

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