Belville sees record turnout for their first Fall Festival since 2019

BELVILLE, NC (WWAY) — For the first time in two years, Belville hosted its popular Fall Festival today at the Brunswick Riverwalk.

The event was cancelled last year due to the pandemic, but saw a record turnout this time around with over 1,000 attendees by noon.

There were activities for people of all ages, with many entire families coming out to the park.

Belville Commissioner Ryan Merrill says all the work that went into planning the fall festival was well worth it.

“This is just a community event to get as many people out in public as we can, enjoying our park and all the natural resources we have,” Merrill said. “Bringing vendors in that can set up and show what they are doing and making locally.”

One of those vendors was Cape Fear Voices, a newspaper publisher in the Cape Fear.

The group recently wrote a book about pandemic stories around the area and the world.

“We decided we’d start documenting the best we could,” Gerald Decker said. “The best way to do that was reach out to all the friends that we could find and have them document for us what their life was like during this.”

Decker says they heard from so many people with their personal pandemic stories they are thinking of writing a sequel to the book.