For ten days every July – South Africa’s winter – Knysna is home to the Knysna Oyster Festival. If you’re planning on visiting this year, here’s everything you need to know so you’re ready for one of the best oyster festivals in the world.

It’s a celebration of food, drink, comedy, fitness and the local community. I went along for two nights this year to the ‘Pick and Pay Flavours of Knysna’ night, for all the food, and then the ‘Comedy Chuckle’, for a good laugh.

Flavours of Knysna

Oysters galore!

Kinda makes sense at an oyster festival though.

It was R180, so around £10 – amazing value – and we were given these little books holding golden tokens for each of the stands to try the local restaurants’ oyster offerings.

There were nine different oyster stands to try – some with totally bizarre toppings. As you’ll see in the video below some had so much topping you couldn’t even get to the oyster to swallow it. Tasty though, we got through it it was fine.