Thousands of people are in Rochester to enjoy this year’s summer Dickens Festival now the weather has improved.

Numbers were slightly down yesterday, as the weather stayed overcast.

The the-three day extravaganza started on Friday and it is expected up to 60,000 people will descend on the town during the festival.

The packed programme of events, which are filled with the usual mix of street entertainment, readings, costumed characters and parades, saw the High Street filled with people wearing their best Victorian and Dickensian costumes.

Even, Gerald Dickens, great-great grandson of the great author was in full costume and rubbed shoulders with characters from his ancestor’s novels including Nancy.

Another visitor, Kathleen McInerney got up close and personal with another Dickens’ character, Fagin and found out he was not so scary after all.

And little Jasmine Phillips, who is just two, got a carry around Rochester Castle Gardens, by Mathew Edgar, where she got exited about he many rides at the fun fair.

Other events during the festival include, a number of costume competitions in the castle gardens. Prizes are being awarded to the best dressed Dickensian character.

There is also a gurning contest and prizes awarded to those who pull the best faces and there is also a chance for visitors to pop along to the craft fair also in the castle gardens.

A whirlwind performance of one of Dickens’ most popular tales and a ghostly story set in a Higham Tunnel is also entertainment the crowds.

This year the festival takes inspiration from The Old Curiosity Shop which features one of Dickens’ most memorable characters – Little Nell.

Medway-based theatre company Play on Words will present a whirlwind performance novel, opposite Crow Lane throughout the weekend.

The London-based Charles Dickens Museum are holding free drop-in workshops inspired by the famous author in the Kings Head car park and could turn back time and make their own Victorian clock, complete with swinging pendulum.

Today, people be able to make and decorate their own journal at the workshops.

Braver visitors can watch Gerald Dickens, perform the ghostly tale of The Signalman at the Guildhall Museum at 3.15pm at 2.15pm today.

Dickens wrote the story a year after he was involved in the Staplehurst rail disaster, which killed 10 passengers and injured countless others.

The tale is believed to be set in the Higham Tunnel, close to his home at Gad’s Hill Place.

There festival also features a number of musical performances, including from the BAE Systems brass band, the Hornchurch Drum and Trumpet corps and the City of Rochester Pipe Band.