Pumpkin Picking at Ridgeway Farm, Blackpool

This is the seventh year Ridgeway Farm has run its Pumpkin Festival, and the shape of the visit is a little different from a straight pick your own field. You arrive for a booked hourly session, and the farm suggests starting with the animals: Ridgeway is a working Blackpool farm with rabbits, alpacas and guinea pigs alongside the usual farmyard residents, and meeting them is part of the ticket rather than an add on.

From there you head to the pumpkin patch to pick your pumpkin. Once you have it, you collect one of the farm's wheelbarrows and push your pumpkin through an autumnal themed orchard to a decorating barn, where you can get to work on it under cover. That barn matters in Blackpool in October, because it means the fiddly bit of the day is not weather dependent even when the patch itself is.

Ridgeway is candid that it is a working farm and that if it has rained the ground will be muddy. It asks for warm clothing, waterproofs and sensible footwear, and specifically says no sliders or flip flops and to leave new or white trainers at home. Wellies are the sensible call.

One thing to plan around: there is a cafe on site serving hot drinks, snacks, stone baked pizzas, hot dogs, freshly made sandwiches and soup, and the farm asks that you do not bring your own food or drink onto the site. So this is not a bring a picnic day out.

Tickets are non refundable, though you can change your date up to a day before or pass the ticket to someone else. The farm sold out completely last year, so the practical advice is to book the session you want rather than turning up on spec.