MARKET day shoppers in Ellesmere had a watery surprise when a real-life ‘mermaid’ suddenly bobbed up in the town centre.

Jeni Hall, from Gobowen, plays Mermaid Seren as part of a professional performance group, and spent more than three hours meeting and greeting visitors and locals along the main streets, the mereside and outside the library.

Her visit was part of Ellesmere’s Meremaid Festival ­- a nine-week initiative aimed at attracting more visitors into the town centre and promoting the library’s summer reading festival programme.

Jeni, a qualified diver, appears regularly in aquariums and other water centres around the country, wearing her colourful mermaid costume.

A spokesman said: "On her visit to Ellesmere she met dozens of children and posed with some of the local traders who have been displaying 'meremaid' figures in shop windows and other business premises as part of a community art initiative led by library assistant Sally Poynton."