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Daffodil weekend is 'Britain at its best'

Shaun Whitmore
BBC News, Cambridgeshire
Reporting fromThriplow
Harriet Heywood
BBC News, Cambridgeshire
Shaun Whitmore/BBC Tom Harvey is sitting on the arm of a brown wooden bench while outside. In front of him is a patch of grass with daffodils. He is wearing black cargo trousers, a blue 3/4 zip jumper and has a long wooden pole in his left hand. He is smiling at the camera and has short dark hair.Shaun Whitmore/BBC
Tom Harvey has planted more than 41,000 bulbs for this year's event on 22 and 23 March

Volunteers are preparing to welcome more than 12,000 visitors to a small village where 500,000 flowers will be in bloom.

Thriplow Daffodil Weekend in Cambridgeshire, which started as a way of raising money for a church roof in 1966, was everything you would expect from "Britain at its best," said one organiser.

Tom Harvey, better known in the village as "daffodil Tom", planted more than 41,000 bulbs around the village last autumn with the help of his wife and children.

He turned his back on city life to move to the area about three years ago and said the charity work, events and community of Thriplow had given him a "boost".

Shaun Whitmore/BBC A woman is riding a bike in Thriplow. Its is a sunny day with blue skies. To her left is a big patch of grass covered in daffodils which stand out against the white walls of a house behind it.Shaun Whitmore/BBC
The event brings the community together to raise money for charity

The two-day event "is everything you would expect from a village fete, but supersized", said event committee chairman Paul Earnshaw.

There will be children's events, farm animals, dray and tractor rides, Morris dancing, blacksmiths at work, classic cars, engines and tractors as well as the flower festival, bell ringing and history talks.

Mr Earnshaw recently completed a 1,300-mile (2,092km) trip to deliver aid to Ukraine in a truck donated by the daffodil weekend committee.

Some planning for this year's event even had to take place during that four-day journey across Europe.

"It's a huge amount of work. Daffodils grow very well round here... so we just have more daffodils than we know what to do with," he added.

"There's half a million daffodil in flower at the moment and over 150 types including the Thriplow gold which you can only see in this village."

Shaun Whitmore/BBC Kerstin Rivett is sat on a blue picnic bench outside The Green Man pub. She is wearing sunglasses, a grey cardigan, silver bracelets and a yellow flower patterned scarf. She has white hair with daffodils tied into the back of her hairdo. Shaun Whitmore/BBC
Kerstin Rivett said every spring she is "overwhelmed by the splash of yellow" that covers Thriplow

Villager Kerstin Rivett said the event brought the whole community together to raise money for charity.

She admitted that when she lived in London, she had never particularly liked daffodils but said the impact of seeing so many in Thriplow was "just glorious".

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