WITH the festival season getting under way, Weymouth's harbourside is preparing for its second big musical bash of the summer.

The third Wessex Folk Festival, which runs from Friday to Sunday, June 6 to 8, is three fantastic days of traditional music and dance which will pack out Weymouth's Hope Square and Trinity Road.

With bands from Dorset, Devon, Somerset and beyond, 14 Morris dance sides and an Appalachian dance presence, the slowly growing event promises to provide perfect English summer entertainment.

Organiser Paul Openshaw said: "Hope Square will be the main arena for the acts and then Trinity Road will be awash with colour and movement.

"I think that the Dick Gaughan concert in Hope Church (Saturday, June 7 at 8pm) will be the highlight, but there will be so much else going on as well in the square that people will find a lot to do."

Events start at 8pm on Friday, June 6, with a concert in Hope Church featuring Last Night's Fun, supported by Camilla and the Can Openers.

At noon on Saturday, Hope Square will burst into life with The Tree Fellahs who will play a blistering set of jigs and reels. After that, it is music all the way, culminating in the rising star Jodie Jones followed by Djambo at 6pm.

As well as the Dick Gaughan concert on Saturday night, the Sea Cadet Centre in Barrack Road on the way to the Nothe will be hosting a barn dance featuring Captain Thunderbolt from 7.30pm.

The final day of the festival, Sunday, June 8, starts at 11am with a performance by Celtic Confusion in Hope Square, followed by Bag of Rats, Three Tuns of Grass, Stompin' Dave Allen and the inimitable Finnian McGurk. At 6pm Benny and Nina, with Jigsaw, bring proceedings to a furious fiddle-fired finish.

Paul said that the main supporters of the festival are the King Arms and Sailors Return pubs and that he is on the look-out for a main sponsor to help the event grow still further.

The Wessex Folk Festival will be followed later in the year by the Evolve folk festival (Friday and Saturday, July 25 and 26) and Paul insists that the two events are not in competition against each other.

"I think it is all exciting stuff," he says. "There is a real vibrant buzz around Weymouth at the moment, with so much going on.

"Our festival is enjoying steady growth. I don't think we ever intended it to shoot off the bar chart but what we do want is to provide a good stage for local performers."

For further details visit the website wessexfolkfestival.co.uk or telephone 01305 860277 or 01305 821611.