CARDIGAN mayor Cllr Richard Jones has praised the unprecedented show of support from townspeople when the town carnival made a spectacular return on Saturday afternoon following a 16-year break.

Organisers were left “surprised but delighted” by the enthusiastic response of Cardis to their appeal to support the resurrected event – a hardy perennial in Cardigan’s calendar until the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth.

And Cllr Jones – who in his acceptance speech as mayor had pledged to try and revive the town’s community spirit – said that he and fellow carnival committee members had been “overwhelmed” by both Saturday’s turnout and the number of floats in the parade.

“As I walked across the bridge at the head of the procession I was thinking: ‘We’ve done it’,” he said. “And we’re not a professional committee or anything like that, just a group of ordinary people.

“There were so many lining the streets, it was like Barley Saturday all over again – and the majority of them were townspeople.”

Read the full story and see more pictures from the carnival in this week’s Cardigan & Newcastle Emlyn edition, on sale now