Held over the weekend of 28 and 29 May, the Saturday alone saw around 4,500 people rock up for an exciting programme of family entertainment, food and drink as well as stalls stuffed with everything chilli and many things cheesy.

Gary Hole won the prize for eating a tub of fiery popcorn faster than any other contestant and, for the first time, a woman scooped the prize in the Chilli Eating Competition.

One of eight contestants, she survived nine rounds reaching dizzying Scoville heights of 1.5 million and a chilli-off with two other finalists. They had to eat three raw chillies as fast as possible. Irena from Cardiff, a stallholder from A Bit Of A Pickle, made it look easy, but her win was hard fought.

Organiser of the Cheese & Chilli Festival, Simon Stewart, said: “We were blown away by the support for the event. Such great feedback from those attending made all the hard work worth it. The festival has been going since 2014 and we are very grateful that the local community continue to support it especially as we were unable to host the event in 2020 and 2021. We worked with the local charity called The Listening Ear, who also benefitted from the kind donations from those attending. We can’t wait for 2023.”