'Wee' Harry Potter fest cancelled because of popularity

A Harry Potter festival that was supposed to take place near Glasgow this summer has been cancelled, because too many people wanted to go.

New Kilpatrick Parish Church warned the festival would be a "wee local event".

The plan was to turn a street in Bearsden, on the outskirts of Glasgow, into a Potter-themed market with stalls and games.

But so many people were interested in the event that the church was forced to cancel.

They posted a warning about the scale of the event on the event's Facebook page earlier this week.

"Our Harry Potter event has gone viral which is fabulous but we fear the papers have somewhat exaggerated the size of the festival," organisers said in a statement on Tuesday.

"We never imagined (foolishly perhaps) that people would be prepared to travel from down south and across from Ireland and even from the Netherlands for a Harry Potter festival."

The organisers even said that some people had compared the event to something on a similar scale to T In The Park.

Details of The Harry Potter Weekend, scheduled for June, were covered in local Scottish papers and The Metro online and it was enough to create huge interest in the festival.

"You can see it is not a big space," said organisers on Facebook shortly before cancelling the event

Organisers also uploaded two photos of the location of the festival to show Potter lovers that is was not "a big space" and just a "wee local event."

But that didn't stop hardcore fans from across the world getting excited about coming and the event has now been cancelled.

"Because it has grown so big we have to sort out safety, parking, capacity and licensing implications and we will not have enough time to do that for this year but want to work on that for some time in the future," the organisers wrote in a second statement.

"We are a very small group of five local folk so please understand this has taken on a life of its own which is bigger than we can manage."

The Harry Potter Weekend was due to take place between 23 and 25 June 2017.

Newsbeat tried to contact New Kilpatrick Parish Church but they have yet to respond.

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