ORGANISERS of the eighth Pendle Beer Festival are raising a toast to the thousands of real ale drinkers who made it the best yet.

They estimate that a record-breaking 3,000 people turned up at the Muni in Colne for the three-day event, despite heavy snow causing chaos to travel plans on Saturday night.

More than 140 ales were on offer and organisers said the feedback was that the beer was of the highest quality.

Martyn Pashley, organiser of the festival, said: “It was a tremendous success. Thursday and Friday were spectacular with people queueing out of the door on Friday night.

“The bad weather hit us a bit on Saturday as it did everyone. People had to change plans and some couldn’t get here or some were going home early.

“It was still a very decent night though. We had a band called The Witnesses from Rossendale who managed to get across through the snow and made it on stage.

“Hopefully we have hit the 3,000 mark for visitors this year.”

Last year 2,600 people attended over the three days, which was then a record.

The official attendance will not be known until later today (Monday), and the winning beer will also be announced later today.

Mr Pashley said: “We had about 140 beers from all over the country. It was a theme of ‘champions’ this year so we had beers that won different awards from all over the place.

“The feedback we had on the beer was fantastic, everybody said the quality was as high as they can remember.”

The festival also held its first ever women only preview evening on Wednesday night.

Mr Pashley said: “The evening went down very well with just over 30 women attending. They said they really enjoyed it so it is something we will look at again.”