Thousands of people will take to the streets of Carlow and Kilkenny today for the annual St Patrick’s Day festivities.
There are 11 parades taking place between the two counties with the main ones being in Kilkenny City and Carlow Town.
In Kilkenny, this year’s theme is bringing the bees back and many of the groups will be incorporating this in their floats.
Festival organiser Marion Flannery says the main goal is to have the city ”buzzing”’ for the weekend.
The parade gets underway from 1.30pm.
Traffic restrictions are in place in the city:
Patrick Street, part of the Castle Road, John Street, Rose Inn Street, High Street and Parliament Street are all closed between 12 noon and 5 o’clock.
In Carlow, the parade takes place from 4 o’clock but there’ll be plenty of acitivities for young and old in the Town before then.
This year’s Grand Marshall is Shauntelle Tynan and the theme also centres around bees.
Permanent road closure in the Hay Market area from 8am to 8pm.
In terms of carparking, organisers are asking people to park in the likes of Dinn Rí car park, the old Penney’s car park, and there’s some limited parking up by the old courthouse as well.
Details of all the other local parades can be found here: https://kclr96fm.com/events/categories/
Meanwhile, wrap up warm if you are heading to any of those events locally and bring the brolly with you!
That’s the message from Carlow Weatherman, Alan O’Reilly who says there’s a chance it may rain on your parade.