Fenland village scarecrows celebrate '75 years of Great Britain'

Organisers of an annual village carnival and sports afternoon refused to be beaten by the current coronavirus crisis and decided to continue with its scarecrow competition.

Doddington carnival and sports committee took the decision to encourage people to create scarecrows based on what would have been the theme for this year's parade - '75 years of Great Britain' even though the main event has had to be cancelled.

There are now 15 scarecrows on display throughout the village and there is a map of their locations on the carnival committee's Facebook page so people can find them.

Jason Shepherd, committee chairman, said: "We decided it would be a good idea to go ahead with the scarecrow competition, although it is not now a competition as such as the prizes we had on offer were all for day's out at local attractions and many of them are not open at the moment.

"So instead we are creating a gallery of them all for people to look at and we're encouraging villagers to download the map off the Facebook page and visit the scarecrows on their daily walk or cycle round the village.

"The theme '75 of Great Britain' is loosely based on the 75th anniversary of VE Day, but we thought that might be a difficult theme for scarecrows and floats, so are asking people to recreate something memorable that has happened in the last 75 years.

"We thought it would be a nice project for families to do while the children are still off school and give children something fun to look out for when they are out for their exercise."