Come the summer holidays, rain or shine, Pick Your Own is a much-loved tradition in our household. Running up and down the rows of fruit, playing hide and seek and surreptitiously scoffing strawberries while filling a punnet has to be the ultimate in good old fashioned entertainment. Only, this year, the whole affair was made all the more wonderful when I discovered Bourne Valley PYO, a family-run fruit farm established 25 years ago in an area of outstanding natural beauty near the idyllic village of St Mary Bourne.

The great thing about this place is that in addition to the fruit there’s a small playground and picnic area – and you can buy teas and coffees. We took along a picnic and filled a lovely few hours, enjoying the beautiful surroundings and picking perfectly ripe jewel-like raspberries and delicious strawberries, destined for jam, freezer and eating! The farm shop also supplemented our bounty thanks to their very tempting fresh harvest of potatoes, broad beans, carrots, beetroot and cabbage. Fresh, local produce simply doesn’t get any better than taking it home straight from the fields.

Photo courtesy of Claire Sutton on Flickr