Hop Stringers

Today was another cold but crisp and beautifully sunny winter's day. Following yesterday's strenuous activity we decided to go for a walk as our permitted form of exercise. We walked out to Barming, down to Allington Lock and back home via the path alongside the River Medway.
Today's main image is taken on the first part of our walk and is of a sculpture called Hop Stringers by the British sculptor Jane Ackroyd. It sits in a field in Barming,  just off Hermitage Lane, that used to be part of extensive orchards and may have also at one time included hop gardens but is now yet another housing development. I think this is a beautiful sculpture (technically it is three sculptures as there are three separate figures) and managed to get an angle where the early morning sun pierced through the metalwork (I have also included another image of the sculpture taken from a different viewpoint showing two of the figures with the housing development in the background).
Hop stringing was a very skilled occupation and involved workers using stilts to string wires between the poles in the hop garden to create a structure up and along which the hops would grow.
We then continued our walk down to Allington Lock which would  normally be thronging with people on such a lovely winter's day - especially due to the lockside cafe and a pub (The Malta Inn) but these are obviously both closed due to the current Covid restrictions. There were still a few cyclists, walkers and runners out taking their permitted exercise too.
My other image is of some sheep that were out feeding in a field alongside the river path at the start of the last stretch of our walk. By this time the cumulative effects of yesterday's run and today's walk were starting to take their toll and we were beginning to feel a bit weary so we decided to end our walk at our local M & S to get a ready meal for dinner and a bottle of wine (for medicinal purposes of course!).
We chose Beef Stroganoff and a bottle of French chardonnay. We later had this followed by an apple spiced caramel cake, that I had made the day before, with ice cream. Lovely!
It's been great to spend more time with my brother - he has been allowed to have a few more days off work due to the current Covid situation but still has to travel to and from London as he is unable to work from home.