CARTMEL held its annual apple day over the weekend to the delight of many townsfolk.

The event, where people are encouraged to bring their spare apples for pressing, has become a tradition in Cartmel, with this year’s festival being deemed a resounding success.

The festival aims to use the huge amount of surplus fruit from resident’s gardens, turning the apples that would have gone to waste into homegrown apple juice and cider.

Dick Palmer, who helped organise the event, said: “Lynda Johnson saw so many apples going to waste the she organised a day to let people come press their own apples, but also to raise funds for St Mary’s Hospice.

“We don’t keep track of how many people are in attendance but we were busy all day from 10am to 3pm. It’s always a bit of fun and it’s nice to get some money together for charity. We managed to make around 100 litres of juice and all the waste and pulp went to a local pig farm.”

All the waste apple from the press is shipped off to a farm owned by Michelin Star restaurant L’Enclume, and used to feed to the pigs there.

Every year it’s a chance for people to get together and enjoy local produce.

Lynda Johnson, who organised the event and provided her own personal press, said: “I think it’s a very good way of keeping the village together and stopping orchards going out of business. We give people back the juice, the pomace that’s left over goes to a farm. We may get some people that have lived in Cartmel their whole lives but have never met so it’s a good way to bring people together.”

Originally Lynda simply gave people the chance to press their own apples and take away the juice, but she has had people come back to her saying they had made it into cider.

“I have no idea how they make it into cider, they just came up and said they’d managed to ferment it into cider,” she said.

Lynda said the day helps to keep the community alive and tight knit despite the growing number of holiday homes in the village.