To celebrate the approach of spring, a Festival of Returning Light will be held in Port Erin on February 3.The idea is that of commissioner Dawn Sim, who attended a festival based on St Bridget’s day to celebrate the arrival of longer, warmer days.

Dawn said the event ’was a fantastic spectacle’.

From 10am and 4pm there will be workshops to make St Bridget’s crosses from reeds and also as a willow lantern at the railway station. At 6.30pm there will be Manx folk music and dance followed by a torchlight and lantern parade to the beach where there will be a fire display to represent the return of spring.

If the weather is more redolent of winter than spring, the event will still go ahead.