The £5 pick your own fruit farm where you get a punnet of strawberries to take home

Families love a bit of fruit picking and strawberry season is now underway at a popular farm that attracts visitors from miles around. Kenyon Hall Farm holds fruit and veg picking sessions in its vast fields and strawberries are the first crop of the season.

Tickets are already selling fast for strawberry picking and cost from £4.95 per person and include a punnet of strawberries to take home. Under 18 months go free.

Read more: I took the kids to Blackpool's new outdoor water park with a giant floating playground

You need to book online to ensure a slot as they sell out quickly and they go on sale one to two days in advance on the website here, where regular updates are posted.

Gooseberry fields are also now open, with no booking required for those. Entry costs between £2 and £4, depending on what's available, and every ticket includes a punnet to fill with fruit and veg. Anything additional is paid for by weight.

Other fruit and veg ready later this summer includes redcurrants, blackcurrants, berries, broad beans, onions and sweetcorn.

The farm, in Croft, on the border of Wigan and Warrington, is family friendly with grass and gravel tracks in the fields making it accessible for sturdy prams and wheelchairs in dry conditions.

All of the strawberries are now grown on 'table tops' - rows of elevated plants at waist height to an adult. Some are inside polytunnels and some are outdoors. Farm bosses say this makes the strawberries 'much better quality, cleaner and easier to pick without the need for bending over'. Toddlers may need assistance in reaching some of the strawberries. All other fruit and veg is grown conventionally - on plants growing outdoors in the soil.

Visitors get to choose an entry time when booking (every 10 minutes between 9.30am and 3.55pm) but can stay for as long as they like. Most visitors spend around 30-60 minutes picking fruit and then another hour browsing the farm shop, plant centre, eating at the cafe or playing on the play area which features climbing frames, swings, slides and play houses.

The farm hosts a popular Maize Maze each summer, with this year's theme soon to be announced. For more details, or to book, visit the website here.