ALTON is set to host a bumper programme of entertainment this weekend, featuring superheroes ranging from literary icon Jane Austen to Wonder Woman and from Winston Churchill to Super Ted!

On Saturday, the town centre will be alive with Regency Day re-enactors, Morris dancers and animals in a petting zoo, as well as a farmers’ market and Alton Lions’ craft market.

For children, there will be a Teddy Bear Festival in the Assembly Rooms offering a wide range of handmade and pre-loved bears, designer wear, furniture and bear-making supplies, a Teddy bear hospital and Teddy’s tea room.

And in the Public Gardens, the Alton Lions will be hosting its 11th annual Party in the Park in aid of the children of Treloar School and College, featuring comic book and superheroes with live music, charity stalls, fun family activities, a ride-on train, bouncy castle, and a beer and tea tent.

Activities throughout the town start from 10am, with an official welcome in the Public Gardens at noon by Alton mayor Derek Gardner, followed at 12.30pm by the opening of Alton Town Council’s Parterre Garden of Remembrance.

And the Mid Hants Railway’s Watercress Line will hosts the annual War on the Line event, which will continue throughout the weekend and offers an opportunity to take a step back in time to the 1940s, with re-enactors, displays of military vehicles, and wartime music and dancing.