A man is building a model of a Cambridgeshire village out of Lego to help visitors find their way around during the village’s famous flower festival. Paul Earnshaw decided to combine his love of Lego and daffodils to create a map of the village of Thriplow for the thousands of visitors who will be travelling to the area for the Daffodil Weekend.
Mr Earnshaw said: “Once I started putting bricks onto bricks, the thing just grew by proxy and it has become a huge map of Thriplow. I’m now getting other people within the village to build little models of their houses and the key buildings to add to the map.”
The Daffodil Weekend started in 1969 when the village needed to raise money to repair the roof of its church. The weekend event has grown over the years and now welcomes people from across the country to enjoy the 500,000 daffodils planted in the village.
In preparation for this year’s event in March, Mr Earnshaw started creating the map in October. He first built the base to match the levels and contours of the village.
He added: “From there, we’ve mapped out all of the roads, the paths, and water courses so they’re all in the right place and to scale so people can use the map to navigate the village. To bring it alive, we have been putting little Lego daffodils on and that gave it a lovely 3D feel. To really bring it to life, we need to put the key buildings on there like the village hall.”
The event draws in around 12,000 people, making the map useful for those who don’t know their way through the village. The map acts as a guide for what will be on offer throughout the weekend, including sheep marking out where the lambs will be and a donkey for the donkey paddock.
The model villages goes into great detail. Mr Earnshaw said he was “particularly pleased with the little dog poo bins”. There is still a lot of work that needs to be done to the map before the Daffodil Weekend starts.
Mr Earnshaw said: “The actual model is probably using about 47,000 bricks at the moment so it’s a lot of Lego. We’re starting to run short of it in the village. If anyone has got any sloped roof tiles, we could really use some of those. The other thing we really need are the little Lego trees. There’s a lot of trees in Thriplow and we’ve only got a few on the model.”
The Daffodil Weekend is described as a “huge event for the village” with everyone having to “pull together” to make it a success each year. Mr Earnshaw continued: “It’s what makes Thriplow such a wonderful place to live because we all know each other. The village gets a massive tidy up ahead of the event.
“The only problem with it is it’s that time of year now where we’re gathering the volunteers. So as I walk around Thriplow, no one will make eye contact with me because they know they’re going to get a job given to them.”
The village is planning to place the Lego model next to the Daffodil Rapid Response Unit caravan. This year’s Daffodil Weekend is taking place on Saturday, March 21, and Sunday, March 22.
You can only attend the event if you buy a ticket, which costs £12 for adults and £6 for children aged between five and 16. Tickets should only be bought through the official Daffodil Weekend website.
Thriplow is only a 19-minute drive from Cambridge via the B1368. A parking space for the event costs £1 and can be bought with your ticket.