PHOTOS: Bocking Rocks keeps community connected during lockdown

Bocking Rocks was launched on Facebook to give youngsters something to do while out for their daily exercise after the pandemic struck.

Residents in Bocking started painting pebbles and planting them around the village for others to find.

Mum-of-three Laura Darby has now taken the craze a step further.

Laura and children Alice, nine, Polly, eight, and Moses, six, have been turning stones into all sorts of hand-painted characters, including Spongebobs, Harry Potters, lockdown ladybirds, love birds, robins, snails, bees and hedgehogs.

"We were looking for something to do during and Bocking Rocks Facebook group made me think of it," said Laura.

"I've been home-schooling my children since lockdown and when they get fed up with science or maths we get the paints out.

"There are hundreds around the village and I must have done about 100 myself.

"Lots of people are doing it and lots of children are involved.

"They find a rock, take a photo and put it on Facebook, and then hide it for someone else to find."

Laura has now decorated stones as hospital staff wearing masks and flags on their heads representing the scores of different nationalities working for the NHS.

She said: "I sent a picture to Broomfield Hospital and they phoned and asked what I was going to do with them.

"They said they loved them and wanted to put them in their children's garden and in the staff hub which has been set up since Covid-19 to chill out in."

Laura and her children delivered the hand-painted stones to the hospital this week.

She said: "People can have them as a keepsake of all this."