Back in March, we started to see signs of Spring. Both in weather and temperature. It’s felt like how Spring used to be in the Midwest years ago which now seems to be perpetual winter until it is summer. One of the first indicators of Spring is the daffodils blooming. They are done now, but we are grateful we could experience them before our trip back to the states. A village called Thriplow puts on an annual daffodil festival and we LOVED the experience!
We spent the whole day there and still felt like we could have spent more time. You knew it was going to be a good day when you drive into a field to park and are being directed by a father using a walking stick carrying a baby on his back. LOVED that! That is how life should be a little bit more often.
The whole town closes off to traffic. You can walk around and see daffodils, visit food tents, entertain children in the play area, sit on tractors, walk past vintage cars, top up at several tea and cake rooms, observe different groups of dancers, watch dog shows, and more. I about died reading the lineup for the dog show contests and saw they have a prettiest bitch contest. It makes sense knowing the definition of the word, but still wasn’t expecting it. We particularly enjoyed watching the most handsome dog contest. We were rooting for the cute, chubby bulldog….who won! You better believe he wore that ribbon proudly. The owner had his stuff next to us so we even got VIP backstage access to meet him after the competition. Oh, he was so cute!!
The town to date has planted over 500,000 daffodil bulbs, and when you walk around you can see the different daffodil varieties. There are more than I knew! You can see the varieties here.
I think our favorite experience, and there were many, was watching the Morris dancers. Morris dance is a traditional English folk dance. Many different types of morris dance exist and from my understanding, the style of dance links to the region of the UK. It was fun and moving to see that style of culture preserved and still celebrated. Something different for us to see compared to walking through castles, national trusts, and churches! I about almost ran out there and started to dance with them. Then reminded myself I don’t know the sequences. Probably not a good idea, so I just bopped around on the sidelines.
The food area was actually quite good! A lot of international-inspired dishes. We got a big dish of paella, then later some chicken satay. Kevin and I got some hard cider while we ate and watched some school kids dance around the Maypole. Let’s pause for a minute and talk cider. UK cider is different from what we’ve experienced in our past life. Some of the cider here (even outside of the daffodil festival) tastes almost like beer. It is dry, not cloyingly sweet, and doesn’t taste like a close variation of apple juice. I mean they do also have sweeter versions too, but even those just feel a bit more authentic. Maybe we’ve just tried the wrong ciders in the past. But I’m here for it now! To top off our tummies, we stopped at a gelato cart because who doesn’t have extra room for gelato?
Overall, the whole dining experience sounds more relaxing than it was, the queues (aka lines) were really long. We jumped to a few places, and as it got to us each time we were told they had to stop taking orders for 10-20 minutes to catch up. Bad luck on our end! While we tried to be fun and eat out, it reminded us of why we like to bring packed lunches to events, ha.
As the day went on, the village streets started to get crowded. Because you can walk in a circle throughout the village to see the different activities and stations it worked out well. Instead of being in a field (think County or State Fairgrounds) or a specifically developed area (like the Summerfest venue in Milwaukee, WI), the experience of integrating the festival into the city added a great dimension. The kids really loved seeing one of the horses that was used for hay rides. We plan to come back next year we enjoyed it so much! Have any of you been to a big spring event that you’ve really enjoyed?
[…] reminds us of the Daffodil Festival where the dad directed cars to park while wearing a baby on his back. I know this is a bit of a […]