Village blooming with 13 varieties of daffodil as Thriplow Festival again hit by pandemic

  • Watch a report by ITV News Anglia's Hannah Pettifer

The recent spell of mild spring weather has led to a bumper crop of daffodils in the village of Thriplow in Cambridgeshire.

But for the second year running it's had to cancel its famous daffodil festival because of Covid restrictions.

The decision to cancel was taken last year despite the blooms being as good as ever as.

There are 13 different types of daffodil in the village of Thriplow, even one that's unique to the village itself, the Thriplow Gold. For more than fifty years this small Cambridgeshire village has hosted its daffodil weekend, but now for the second year running, it's had to cancel the event.

The Thriplow Daffodil Festival has been running for 51 years and has raised £500,000 for charity Credit: ITV News Anglia

Paul Earnshaw, who is chairman of the Thriplow Daffodil Weekend, said: "We were hoping we were going to be ok this year but you could see that all the signs were going against it so the daffodil weekend won't be happening for yet another year."

Thousands of people from across the country come to the village every year to see around half a million daffodils. The festival raises many thousands of pounds each year for local charities and has raised half a million pounds in the past five decades. With current Covid restrictions, organisers say the event just couldn't go ahead despite this year seeing some of the best blooms in the village's history.

The blooms were expected to be better than ever in 2021 because of deadheading done in 2020 Credit: ITV News Anglia

A date's already been set for next year's festival on 19 and 20 March 2022 in the hope these blooms won't go unappreciated by the wider world yet again.