A FESTIVAL celebrating the Alice in Wonderland stories was being launched in the New Forest today with a girl portraying Alice riding through Lyndhurst in a pony and trap.

The event is followed by a Mad Hatter’s fun run through Lyndhurst tomorrow. Organised by the Fenwick2 health and wellbeing centre, the run will begin at 11am at the old racecourse opposite the police station and finish at Bolton’s Bench.

Dozens of other Alice-related activities will be held in Lyndhurst and neighbouring villages over the next eight months.

Author Lewis Carroll based the character on a ten-year-old girl he met during a boat trip on the River Thames at Oxford. Alice Liddell moved to Lyndhurst after marrying Reginald Hargreaves at Westminster Abbey in 1880. She lived in an 18th century mansion on the outskirts of the village and is buried at Lyndhurst’s St Michael and All Angels Church.