LACK of funding has forced organisers to cancel the award-winning Samphire Festival, held on Porlock Hill for the last two years.

Flora Blathwayt and Josh Beauchamp said they were “heartbroken” that they could no longer run the sell-out festival, but they cannot continue to take the financial risks involved without secure backing.

“We are so unbelievably disappointed,” said Flora.

“Porlock opened its arms to us – we were overwhelmed how well they received it.

“It’s so disappointing for us and them that we couldn’t make this work.”

The music and arts event won Best Small Festival 2016 and Best PR Campaign 2017 at the National Outdoor Events Association Awards, as well as an ID and C Grassroots Festival Award.

Flora said that their success on the field was not echoed financially, largely down to costly health and safety licence stipulations which ultimately made running the festival unsustainable and too risky without secure financial backing, which they do not have.

The last two and a half years working on Samphire had been the most memorable years of their lives, Flora said.

“Josh and I embarked on this journey together with literally zilch festival or event experience, and to have got through two fabulous years safely and with brilliant critical acclaim is truly way beyond what we ever anticipated.”

She said people told them that, at 30 and 27, they were too young and inexperienced to organise such an event “but we were determined we could make it work.

“It’s certainly not been without a large number of ups and downs – two court hearings, breaking crowd-funder records, winning multiple awards – but never ever has it not been worth it, and in tough times we’ve always been able to dig deep, imagining the special party we were creating by the sea above Porlock.”

Flora said the costs of the music and the art became a fraction compared to all the other costs of putting on the festival – to the point where the average ticket price of £70 could not match the approximately £124 per person it cost.

“You don’t imagine you need trackway, you need echo barriers to stop the sound leaving the tents, you need a temporary traffic regulatory order, security, structures, licences, road safety – so many things, it’s all cumulative,” she said.

The duo had invested significant amounts of money to get Samphire off the ground but, running a festival in such a beautiful but remote location, they realised they needed significantly more investment.

Flora said they needed to put on a safe event and would not have wanted to take risks, but she believed there had been overkill on the requirements in relation to the number of people involved.

“We had two brilliant years but we were not established yet; we definitely were unlucky, it all got too much too soon.

“We had some real experts on our team, one with experience of [organising] about four festivals across the UK, and he said he had never seen such an over-resourced festival for its size,” she said.

“To be in a position where we have no option but to let go of this despite two brilliant years is really hard.

“Success and financial success are two very different things - away from the spreadsheets it’s gone great but the costs of putting on a festival are so flipping crazy.

“We’re well aware the first few years are expected to be very tough and we definitely weren’t expecting it to be any sort of cash cow, but we’ve been hit pretty hard by health and safety, legal costs and licence stipulations.

“It has made running our festival on our beautiful Exmoor site totally unsustainable.”