Pumpkin Picking at Maxeys Farm Shop, Kirklington

Maxeys is an old fashioned Nottinghamshire farm shop on the A617 at Kirklington, and its pumpkin field is deliberately low key: no timed tickets, no booking, no queue system. You park free, pay a small admission per person with under 16s free, and walk out into the field. The pumpkins are grown where you pick them, so the ground is uneven and it gets genuinely muddy after rain. The farm is direct about this and says wellies or boots are the best footwear, and that prams and wheelchairs are allowed but used at your own risk.

The pumpkins themselves start from £2, with mini squashes from 50p, so a family can leave with several without much outlay. The farm asks you to lift pumpkins from the base rather than the stalk, because the stalks are prickly and snap off.

Around the field there is more than the picking. James' Pumpkin Carriage is a tractor ride at £2.50, there are pumpkin bouncy castles at £2.50, a maize maze, a straw tractor, a straw bale mountain, a pumpkin cannon and a scarecrow competition you vote in. Those extras are charged individually rather than bundled, which keeps the entry price low if you only want the pumpkins.

Food is a strength here, because the farm shop is the main business. Expect homemade burgers, sausages and bacon, hot jacket potatoes, loaded fries, baked goods, whippy ice cream and fresh coffee, with plenty of benches in the food area and outdoor seating.

The one hard rule to plan around: no dogs or animals are allowed, for hygiene reasons, with no exceptions made for the car park. Toilets on site are portable, though there is a proper baby changing room inside the farm shop. The farm sits four miles from Southwell, nine from Newark, ten from Mansfield and seventeen from Nottingham.