THIS year the Llandrindod Wells Victorian Festival comes of age, celebrating its 21st year.

The nine-day festival will be incorporating some new events and street entertainment with some of the old favourites which regular festival-goers have come to love. Held in the last full week of August before the Bank Holiday, this popular festival is going from strength to strength and has now become one of the premier Victorian festivals in Britain.

As Llandrindod Wells was a thriving spa resort in the Victorian era it seemed natural to base the festival on the Victorian theme.

The town's unspoilt architecture provides a perfect backdrop to the celebrations, and Temple Gardens is an ideal venue for the many different types of street entertainment provided free for the visitors and townsfolk throughout the day.

The aim of the festival is to provide family fun and to cater for all ages and tastes, while keeping to a Victorian theme.

Attracting some 40,000 visitors to a town that has a population of only 5,000 is no mean feat, but the apparent ease with which it is done is largely due to the transformation achieved in the totality of the reversion to the Victorian era.

The effect of horses and carriages, Victorian window displays and the townspeople and some visitors sporting a whole range of appropriate costumes creates an atmosphere, the effect of which is nothing short of miraculous.

The Festival includes non-stop street theatre daily throughout the week - afternoon music hall sing-a-longs, Victorian fairground, tea dance, Queen Victoria's garden party, town crier competitions, bathing belle and beau competitions, daily costume parades, talks, exhibitions, workshops for both children and adults, themed afternoons such as 'End of the Pier', 'Country Comes to Town', Beatrix Potter, Victorian Olympics (with sedan chair racing to name one of the many races).

There are also evening events including old time music hall, male voice choir concerts, plays, magic of the musicals, Victorian hayride, night at the Oscars (celebrating 100 years of Ealing film studios) and grand Victorian ball.

At the end of the nine days, the proceeding are closed in the grandest of manners with the moving torchlight procession and fireworks display over The Lake - a spectacle not to be missed.

For more information of events telephone the Festival Office on 01597-823441.