Crockford Bridge Farm Pumpkin Festival – Review

Pumpkin picking has become a popular day out for many families, but the sceptics point out that it would be easier and cheaper to pick one up from the supermarket, and that it’s more about the pictures for social media than anything else. We have enjoyed the two occasions we have been pumpkin picking, at Tulley’s Farm in West Sussex and Naturally Thinking farm in Wallington, but I was excited when I read about the pumpkin festival at Crockford Bridge Farm in Weybridge. They had entertainment, fairground rides and games, a scavenger hunt, maze and more.

Unfortunately my husband and I both found the event quite disappointing for what we had paid. Entry was £12 per person for adults and children over the age of one, plus a £2 booking fee per ticket. I’m sure that putting on events isn’t cheap, and farms probably don’t make a lot of money the rest of the year, but £42 for three people seemed a bit much.

There were three time slots to choose from – 9.30-12, 12.30-3 and 3.30-6, so we were only going to be there for two and a half hours. I was glad we had chosen the first time slot as the car park was very muddy and as it rained a bit during the morning, we had a moment as we were leaving when it seemed as if the car was going to be stuck in the mud, so I’m glad we didn’t go any later.

On arrival we were given a children’s activity sheet, with questions like how many red pumpkins could we find and a word to unscramble with letters we could find on pumpkins, but they didn’t have any pens and I hadn’t known to bring one with us. The letters were easy to find and it didn’t take long to figure out what the word was, as the quiz sheet gave a big clue. I think this must have been the scavenger hunt referred to on the website.

There were circus entertainers – we saw two stilt-walkers as we arrived, and a lady making giant bubbles who we watched for a few minutes, but we didn’t come across any of the other advertised performers (I suspect we just missed them). My daughter was wearing her Halloween costume but didn’t want to enter the fancy dress competition – where the prize was a pumpkin.

We enjoyed a very nice hot chocolate with cream and marshmallows at one of the food and drink stands, then my daughter went on the carousel. There were only three rides in the fairground, a ferris wheel, helter skelter and carousel, and the latter was the only one she wanted to go on. She wasn’t tall enough to ride by herself so my husband went with her, meaning he paid £7 for one ride.

She also got her face painted – it was a short queue that moved fairly quickly, as there were two face painters doing some very quick and simple designs, which cost £6.

There were three vintage fairground games of the ‘throw a ball in a bucket’ variety which were free to try; I was keen to have a go but my daughter didn’t want to and was more interested in playing in the playground and going on the tree swing. The corn maze was very easy and only took us a couple of minutes to go around; next to it was a small obstacle course with tyres to step in the whole way around and a couple of slides coming down off hay bales.

There were several pumpkin displays to look at – I particularly liked the cowgirl faces – and of course a pumpkin market to buy your pumpkins. We paid £3.95 for a fairly large pumpkin which I thought was a reasonable price – there is a price list on display based on weight and each pumpkin is weighed when you pay. There was an area inside to decorate your pumpkin but we thought our five year old was still too young to be able to do it; I’d brought along some stickers for decorating pumpkins but as it had started raining we decided to take our pumpkin home.

It’s worth noting that the fairground and pumpkin market are outside the festival area, so you don’t need to pay the entry fee to go on the rides or buy a pumpkin to take home, though you can’t use the carving area there as that’s inside the festival area.

We enjoyed the two hours we spent there, largely because we had gone along with friends. But we found the entertainment a bit disappointing, the maze and in fact the whole event a lot smaller scale than expected, and given the fairground rides are outside the festival area, it didn’t feel like we were getting particularly good value for money for the entry fee given we had to pay extra for rides and face painting, as well as obviously food and drink and pumpkins. Still it was nice to do something a bit different and definitely did offer something extra to just buying a pumpkin in the supermarket!