Whitstable Oyster Festival

Month : July
Place : Kent, England
Famous For : Oyster festival
Attractions : Parade, Fire works and nine days of Gouging on Oysters

The Whitstable Oyster Festival is a popular festival observed in Kent, England to celebrate the town's links with the oyster industry. It's an annual event held during the month of July. The celebrations date back inhistory when the festivities involved the blowing up of a boat and a naval battle using soot and flour between the towns millers and sweeps, In recent times, the grand celebrations involve a parade, fire works and nine days of gouging on oysters.

Major Attractions

The modern age celebrations of the Whitstable Oyster Festival not only features the parades, fireworks and other glitering events, but there are still more nautical and traditional events in between the performances, music and market days. Since the county of Kent has been associated with oysters for hundreds of years, the Whitstable Oyster Festival is tagged as 'Pearl of Kent'. The Whitstable Oyster Festival is part of this ancient association, a time, since the age of the Normans, when fishermen and dredgers gave thanks for their mixed bounty of the very beautiful and not-so-attractive but very tasty fruits of the sea. They gave thanks in the slack summer season though, to make sure they had something to give thanks for and now the festival has conveniently been married with the date of the FEAST day of Saint James f Compostella, the patron saint of oysters, which is on the 25th of July.