RESIDENTS are spending thousands of pounds transforming an ordinary Scottish town into an adventure cartoon wonderland.
Locals in Bo'ness, West Lothian, have "dressed" their homes with huge facades, known as "arches", for the town's annual Children's Fair weekend which starts today - the last week of term.
The theme this year is Brave - the Oscar-winning Disney animated film set in the Scottish Highlands, which follows the adventures of Princess Merida as she defies age-old custom, causing chaos for the kingdom.
John Bell said the fair is the "time of year everyone gets stuck in", spending thousands of hours and thousands of pounds turning homes into whatever it takes to impress. He added: "It's friends of friends and locals that help out - everyone sticks in for Bo'ness Fair."
This year the decorations include medieval castles, courtyards, and even the witches' hut.
Among the most impressive installations has been built at the home of 11-year old fair "champion" Jamie Ogg in Kinglass Avenue. His father, David Ogg, has created a huge Loudon Castle-inspired replica. The "masculine" castle, based on Loudon Castle near Kilmarnock, took over 200 hours to complete, "completely smashing" an initial budget of £3,000.
David said yesterday: "A rough ballpark figure will be close to double figures of thousands."
Fair Queen-elect, 12-year-old Louise Wilson's arch has been modelled on the Great Hall in Brave. The extensive structure, in Ewart Grove, took 1,500 man hours to complete, with proud uncle chartered engineer Graham Thackerae leading the way.
He said: "We can't really put a price on it it is a community effort, everyone pitched in."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article