Tulips for Tapping

This morning H drove us over to see the tulip field near Sandringham, unfortunately G wasn't able to make it as planned. It's a 12 acre field planted in November with c6.300,000 tulip bulbs which will be harvested in the Summer, dried, stored, then grown in greenhouses to supply supermarkets. This is the fourth year that such a field is open to the public via pre-booked tickets to raise money for The Norfolk Hospice - Tapping House.  The tickets went on sale on Apr 8th and sold out within hours, you're given a 40 min time slot but it isn't enforced. Last year the event raised £140,000 for charity.

It was flipping freezing! I went three years ago on a lovely sunny day, 
the contrast couldn't have been more different. https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2836661931203365208
There were far more members of the public attending now, and I have to say it wasn't as photography friendly as it was then, with lots of rows of the same colour tulips before the colour change. So I focussed this time on photographing individual tulips a different colour to the ones around them, but I'd only taken my small lens. The soil was thankfully quite sandy as there's been quite a bit of rain, but I still nearly slipped over three times. So nice to see this in the UK and be part of raising so much money for such a worthy cause.

Then we went to Sandringham - we don't have to pay for entrance to the house or gardens as we're Historic Houses members, but we were both surprised at the £9 charge for car parking for 4 hours! Lots of significant work with heavy machinery was going on in the gardens as King Charles makes his own mark. I do like Sandringham, I think the house has a lovely feel to it and so many gorgeous family photos going back several generations and, my favourite, some brilliant bronzes. It was too early for the gardens to be at their best, but still nice to see bluebells etc. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed as work was being done on it, so a small cafe area was in use but all seating was outside. I have to say, I did get incredibly cold by the time we left, when I got home around 4pm my weather station was recording only 6C and that's without the effect of the northerly wind. We did pretty much miss the rain though, which started as we left.