Food festival sunk by bad weather

Jul 7 2012

A food festival has fallen victim to heavy rain and flooding affecting parts of Scotland.

Around 30,000 people were expected to visit the Taste of Edinburgh over the weekend.

Organisers had already scrapped the Saturday session before announcing the Sunday events would also be abandoned at the Meadows park near the city centre. The event, expected to run from Friday to Sunday, was to feature pop-up restaurants, chef demonstrations and exhibitors.

Organiser Justin Clarke said: "Despite all our planning, over the last 24 hours we have experienced some extremely heavy rainfall and our site at the Meadows has become severely flooded. We have been working throughout the night with our health and safety experts and the City of Edinburgh Council parks department to do what we can to make the site operational, but despite all our efforts we have been forced to cancel the show.

"This has not been an easy decision and we are all absolutely devastated. So much hard work has gone into making this show happen with the event team, sponsors, restaurants, suppliers and exhibitors all going above and beyond." Refunds will be offered for both days, he said.

Edinburgh was one of the worst affected parts earlier in the day with road closures and the threat of flooding in residential areas. The A720 city bypass was closed between Hermiston Gait and Straiton for a short time after 9am.

Firefighters were using pumps to deal with flooding in the Stockbridge Colonies area of the capital. Up to 40 homes were affected by flooding from the nearby Water of Leith.

A city council spokesman said: "Sandbags have been provided to residents and the council's emergency social work team has also organised Stockbridge Primary School as a standby rest and information centre should any affected residents wish to leave their homes." Emergency services said the situation improved later in the day.

Various flood warnings and alerts were in place across much of the east of Scotland, with rain concentrated in Edinburgh and the south-east in the morning.

The T in the Park festival, near Kinross, got off to a soggy start, with the Slam tent venue unable to open as scheduled because of the wet weather. The weather forecast is expected to improve on Sunday, organisers said.