What's brewing in kent?
How many of us have envied the romanticised lifestyle of the Larkin family in HE Bates’ novel The Darling Buds of May? The enterprising, tax-dodging Larkins lived off their wits and picking strawberries in the Garden of England – Kent. This was vividly brought to our television screens in the early 1990s in a series that starred David Jason, Pam Ferris and Catherine Zeta-Jones.
Kent, the home of fruit farms, glasshouses and orchards, was also a centre for growing hops, used to flavour and stabilise beer.
Fruit- and hop-picking was far from the idyllic life depicted in Bates’ book, but it was fun and is still remembered fondly by those who took part.
A chat with my Dad revealed that as a lad, he went hop-picking with his aunt, uncle and cousins. They arrived from London by train and stayed in wooden huts. He chuckled at the memory of going scrumping for apples with his uncle in nearby orchards and making their getaway by bike, with my Dad on the crossbar.
“We were nearly caught, and would have got into a lot of trouble. We had to hide when they came searching for us at the huts,” he said. Perhaps my great-uncle should have known better, but my Dad recalls it as a brilliant holiday.
The toast of oasts
If you’ve ever driven through the Kent countryside, perhaps en route to a ferry from Dover, you
