Bents Park food festival: Great North Feast organisers delighted with response - and already looking ahead to next year

The popular food festival returned to Bents Park in South Shields over the bank holiday weekend for three days of food and entertainment, with organisers delighted to the response to the event.

The scaled-down event offered crowds a huge variety of food and drink stalls along with live entertainment from North East artists and organisers are already planning ahead for next year, with the food festival set to return during both the May and August bank holiday, in 2022.

Visitors explored around 20 stalls at this years event, including hot food vendors, selling everything from burgers and Cuban food, to cakes and drinks.

Organiser Mark Deakin, who runs the event with wife, Shelly, was delighted with the response to the festival’s return.

He said: “It was a really good bank holiday weekend. The weather was great Saturday, not so much Sunday and Monday but generally it was a good turn out. The stalls all did well and it was really nice to just get back up and running.

“With this being the first event back in the park we scaled it back a little bit compared to previous years, so it was a slightly smaller event footprint wise but it worked out well and we’re all really happy with it.

“Hopefully next year we can come back bigger and better. It was a really positive atmosphere and it was a nice chilled event where everyone was having a good time.”

This was the fourth time the event had been held in South Shields and plenty of food lovers turned out for the event.

Mark and Shelly also run several other food and drink festivals, including the Proper Food and Drink Festival, which has been a hit with crowds in South Shields for around seven years.

The pair, who also run tapas bar and restaurant, Salt House, in Cullercoats, have already held two successful food and drink events since restrictions were lifted, including their Feast By the Sea event in Whitley Bay earlier this month.

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