THE organiser of Ilkley's Complementary Medicine Festival hailed last weekend's event as the best so far.

Beryl Fox, who established the event as a career move in 1988 after becoming dissatisfied with her office job in Leeds, said: "On the Sunday people were turning up before it opened at ten o'clock and more people turned up than for any previous festival. It is going from strength to strength."

It was all a far cry from Mrs Fox's first event, inspired by a trip to London to visit a similar festival.

"It was wonderful and I came home and got to help to organise one here - I just loved it," Mrs Fox said.

She said the first one at the King's Hall/Winter Garden complex was a very small affair where 'you could've heard a pin drop'.

But it gradually built up over the years into a major event attracting thousands of visitors. She said the success of the festival was in a large part due to it being held at the Kings Hall/Winter Gardens complex, which was an ideal venue for that kind of event.

This year Mrs Fox, of Alexandra Crescent, Ilkley, said the many alternative treatments on offer proved the biggest attraction for visitors.

She said: "It is a very popular event. We get about 2,000 people going through the doors. It is not particularly people from Ilkley but from all over. It is a really big one."

A hundred stall holders were at the event, offering everything from tarot readings and crystals to aura photography, making the Ilkley Complementary Medicine Festival, one of the largest of its kind in the country.

Mrs Fox said that the event had become so big that large commercial organisations were wanting to get in on the act. This year the Body Shop wanted to take part.

Mrs Fox said: "I have never seen

that at a festival of this kind before."

Aside from the stands, where people could buy gems, minerals and incense, there were also lectures for people who wished to learn more about the range of alternative medical treatments and medicines.