Maypoles, pagans...and holiday mayhem on roads
BRITONS were out and about celebrating the bank holiday yesterday in a topsy-turvy bag of May Day weather.
Large swathes of the North basked in glorious sunshine while parts of the South were hit by fierce showers.
But spectators in Glastonbury, Somerset, were fortunate to see some sunshine as they watched traditional maypole dancers.
And down in Hastings, East Sussex, revellers dressed as pagans shrugged off blustery rain to take part in the Jack In The Green Festival that featured teams of Morris dancers from all over the country.
Students at the University of St Andrews, where Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge studied, braved chilly temperatures to mark the annual holiday with a dip in the North Sea.
Known as the May Dip, undergraduates in Fife, Scotland, strip off – some naked – to take the plunge at dawn in a tradition said to promote good luck in forthcoming exams.
In Norfolk, coastguards warned parents to keep their children safe after pictures emerged of families playing near crumbling cliff edges at Runton, Cromer.
Despite warning signs, a dozen people were snapped in the space of an hour on Sunday, walking near the edge of cliffs severely weakened by winter high tides.
A spokesman for Cromer and Sheringham Coastguard said: “We strongly advise all members of the public to not walk under cliffs or near the edge on top.”
Elsewhere, tragedy struck in west Cornwall when a man fell to his death off the cliffs at Land’s End.
In Wales, a 14-year-old girl had to be rescued after becoming stuck in quicksand up to her waist at a beach near Llanelli, north of Swansea.
Lucky
Police, fire and ambulance crews responded to Saturday’s incident, together with the coastguard and RNLI.
Incident commander Steve Richards said: “The girl was very lucky to get out of that sand with the speed of the tide.”
It wouldn’t be a May Day bank holiday without travel disruption. Traffic was at a standstill for more than four hours after a crash involving two luxury sports cars on the eastbound M62 on Sunday. The engine of a black Porsche is thought to have been torn out and sent hurtling up the carriageway by the force of the collision with a blue and white Ford Mustang Shelby.
No one was injured in the incident on a bridge over a 100ft drop to the River Ouse close to the town of Howden in East Yorkshire.
Furious motorists got out of their cars and wandered about on the carriageway and some were seen walking their dogs on the embankment as the hours passed.
One eyewitness said: “They just kept spinning and I really thought they were going to go into the river.
“As they hit the metal railings, the engine of the Porsche was 200 metres up the road.”
Photographs showed severe damage to both vehicles and to the central crash barrier.
One witness saw one of the engines slide across the carriageway, adding: “It was shocking.”