You stagger to the top of a hill, all puff gone, legs protesting, and in front of you is a purple-clad prince kneeling at the foot of a turreted gate with a woman at the top unfurling her long yellow-haired locks. Then you see Humpty Dumpty on a wall, a little further along Miss Muffet – complete with dangling spider. And Little Bo Peep beneath an umbrella – no, there wasn't an umbrella in her tale but like Rapunzel and the rest of these characters, she's made of straw and needs to survive all weathers.
From Flamstead, Herts, to Kettlewell, Yorkshire, there are scarecrow trails like this all over Britain this bank holiday, bringing colour, vibrancy and fun to the countryside. In Meerbrook, Staffordshire, where the festival has a nursery rhyme theme, the scarecrows were only intended as a one-off, two years ago. But the practice seems to have stuck. Wayne and Karen Turner, 46, own Meerbrook's pub, the Lazy Trout, the centre of village life. "Everyone gets involved. Every day more scarecrows appear," says Wayne, whose own scarecrow is a Humpty Dumpty that comes to life – with the aid of a water pump. "I love the surprised look on people's faces when Humpty moves." But dark murmurings suggest Wayne has upped the stakes with his mechanised model.
Lynne Stirton, 52, who lives in the former schoolhouse, has one of the five Rapunzels in the village. "We have a high window so Rapunzel seemed apt – till I saw my neighbour hanging a long plait out her window and thought, oh no, another one!" Where did they get all the straw? "In the pub. They were handing it out to everyone. It's that kind of place."
So what happens to all the scarecrows? A few will be stowed in attics but most are dismantled and disposed of. None, alas, ever gets to scare any crows.
