Get ready for some enlightening entertainment as Rochester prepares for one of its biggest events of the year.

Rochester High Street is set to be heaving with the 60,000 people who are expected to flock to the town for the pinnacle of the Dickens calendar.

Top hats and bonnets will be the order of the day as costumed characters and parades take to the streets for the annual Dickens Festival, now in its 38th year.

Dickens was a great lover of Rochester and many of his novels and characters were inspired by the city’s rich sights and sounds.

With the theme the Old Curiosity Shop, this year’s celebration will bring together Victorian street entertainment, readings, costumed characters and parades.

Medway Council’s Howard Doe said: “We’re really lucky to have such rich connections to Charles Dickens here in Medway and that really is something to celebrate.”

DON'T MISS AT THE FESTIVAL

• London-based Charles Dickens Museum will be holding free drop-in workshops in the Kings Head car park.On Friday, visit their Little Shop of Curiosities to create your own characters and shop wrapped up in a matchbox.On Saturday, visitors can Turn Back Time and make their own Victorian clock, complete with swinging pendulum.Visitors will be able to make and decorate their own journal at the workshops on Sunday.

• Watch Gerald Dickens, the great-great-grandson of the author, perform the ghostly tale of The Signalman at the Guildhall Museum at 3.15pm on Friday, and at 2.15pm on Saturday and Sunday. Dickens wrote the story a year after he was involved in the Staplehurst rail disaster, which killed 10 passengers and injured countless others.

• Medway-based theatre company Play on Words will present a whirlwind performance of The Old Curiosity Shop throughout the weekend, opposite Crow Lane throughout the weekend.

• Visitors can join students from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama as they search Rochester High Street for Dickens, bumping into some of his characters along the way.

• There will be 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.

• The ever-popular fun fair will be in Rochester Castle Gardens as well as the craft fair.

• Get into the spirit of the festival on Thursday night, at the Dickens Festival Ball at The Corn Exchange, Rochester, at 7.30pm.There will be a three course meal followed by dancing in the grand ballroom.

DETAILS

The Rochester Dickens Festival takes place in the High Street from Friday, June 3, to Sunday, June 5. There will be parades throughout and Dickensian characters mingling in the streets.

For details, visit visitmedway.org