Last modified on Mon 3 May 2021 05.12 EDT
May Day has long been an excuse for parades and British peculiarities: washing the face with morning dew; going barefoot; decorating the May bush; dancing around the maypole … but the nation’s eccentricities have never been confined to the official start of spring.
There is the John Knill ceremony dating from 1801 and held every five years in July in St Ives to celebrate the town’s eccentric mayor and tax collector, in which 10 young girls dressed in white and accompanied by musicians dance while Psalm 100 is sung.
Or the cheese-rolling festival at Brockworth near Cheltenham where participants fling themselves down steep Cooper’s Hill in pursuit of a runaway double gloucester on spring bank holiday Monday.