Pumpkin Picking at Lychpole Farm, Sompting

Free to enter, free to park and no booking required: this is about as low-commitment as a pumpkin trip gets. Lychpole Farm is a 1,000 acre mixed farm just off the A27 at Sompting, run by Caroline and David Harriott, and the pumpkin patch is managed by the family alongside the beef cattle and sheep.

Around 70,000 pumpkin seeds go in each year, producing more than 20 varieties of pumpkin, squash and gourd. Pumpkins are priced by size and measured before you pay, so what you spend depends entirely on what you carry back. The crop is rotated to a different field every year to keep the weeds down, which means the patch sits in a new spot each season.

Beyond the picking there are seasonal crafts, face painting, ride-on tractors and the farm's resident sheep to look at. Tractor trailer rides run at weekends, weather permitting, and are by donation rather than at a fixed price. Food and drink traders are on site, including homegrown beef burgers, pizza, coffee and ice cream, and both cash and card are accepted. There are customer toilets on site.

It is a working field, so wellies or sturdy shoes are the right call, particularly after rain. Dogs are not allowed anywhere on site. Anything left unsold at the end of the season is donated to local soup kitchens, used as animal feed or returned to the fields to improve the soil, which is a quietly satisfying thing to know as you pick.