nogbad's blips

By nogbad

Dusk

I'm going to have to interpret this blip so I'll read from left to right.

First we see the silhouettes of oast houses. These distinctive buildings were used to dry the hops before they were packed into sacks and taken to the brewers to flavour beer. This is a very busy road so next we see the blur of a vehicle passing and its red lights. On the horizon more oast houses against the glow of the sun setting and the patch of light towards the right is from a fairground ride.

This is the Hop Farm and it is the largest single group of oast houses anywhere in the world. Until a few years ago it was owned by Whitbread, a very large brewer and it sat in the centre of hop growing in Kent - hop gardens as far as the eye could see in all directions. Now Whitbread don't brew beer but make their money from selling coffee and budget hotel rooms and many of the hop gardens have been grubbed up because tastes have changed and British hops aren't used in lager beers. The Hop Farm is still a tourist attraction but owned privately.

I'm ridiculously pleased with this shot as I was dodging traffic and couldn't use a tripod or monopod so it's hand-held and one of the few that wasn't too fuzzy to use. I stopped because I saw the sun dipping behind the oasts but there's nowhere to park so it was a very quick snap. It seems to work in big too.

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