Sunflower Season at The Patch MK

Every year, I have blogged about our visits to The Patch MK – for both the sunflowers and the pumpkins – and honestly, each year, it gets better and better! There was so much to do and see this year that I regretted booking a 1:30pm arrival slot (especially when The Patch closed at 5pm). Although it was cloudy, and the photos may suggest otherwise, the weather was fine.

All the favourites

Year after year, some of the attractions and activities remain – the ones that are always popular, especially all the photo opportunities. These included:

• Barrel train
• Bale maze and bale mountain
• Slide world
• Mini golf
• Duck racing
• The Patch beach
• Vintage tractor and combine harvester
• Patch letters, butterfly, and heart

I vividly remember the first year we visited The Patch and Alfie was too little for all the haybale fun. He climbs the mountain now with such confidence and even went right to the top, which of course, filled me with fear. He loves the maze too… I think we must have gone over there a few times and it was difficult to prise him away, but there was so much to explore. He still loves slide world too, climbing the small wall with ease. They will both always be his favourites, I think. We didn’t ride the barrel train this time, but I believe the price stayed the same (£2.50 per person).

New additions

There were over 35 attractions this year – so many new and exciting ones! We tried to check them all out and managed them all (except the wall ball). New for 2023 were:

• Roller bowler
• Wall ball
• Slide hive
• Cornboy lassoing
• Cornholes
• Duck flight

The corn hole was like a beanbag toss and it was much harder than it looked! I don’t think any of us managed to get a single beanbag in the hole. The roller bowler was much more successful. With two levels of difficulty, we had to roll the ball over the dip and see if it would come back. Alfie also had a go at the cornboy lasso. Here, you had to sit upon the horse and toss the hoops onto the horns of the bull. There really was so much fun to be had this year!

Three amazing mazes

The dinosaur (Lost World) maze from last year was back, but bigger and better – with more dinosaurs to hunt. Because we did this one previously, we gave it a miss, but I don’t think we would have had time anyway. It’s a shame because we really enjoyed it last time – it’s perfect for any dino fans!

I was more interested in the two new mazes, but unfortunately we didn’t have time for the musical maze – which I was gutted about! You could hear all the sounds as you walked around The Patch, and it sounded amazing. Hidden within the maze, there were beautiful outdoor wooden instruments – all handmade – and from the social channels, it just looked stunning.

Instead, we tried our hand at the Enigma maze, to see if we could crack the code and enter a fantastic competition to win some prizes from local businesses, including Wyld, Wicken Toys, Bletchley Park and of course, The Patch MK. There were puzzle points which revealed letters to the mystery word… we only managed to find three checkpoints, but from the letters we had (Y, H and C), I knew immediately that word would be BLETCHLEY! It was certainly on theme. We actually got lost in the maze and it took a while to get out.

Despite running out time to do everything, we made time for coffee (decaf for me) and cake – or in Alfie’s case, a drink, and some popcorn. We also headed the flower fields! This year, you could pick wildflowers in addition to the sunflowers and The Patch had planted 75 million wildflower seeds, alongside 500,000 sunflower seeds (crazy, right?). Sunflowers were priced at £1 per stem (or six stems for £5) and there was a great bundle deal that included six sunflowers, a bouquet of wildflowers and jar of local honey – which we went for.

As soon as tickets for the pumpkins went on sale, we got booked on and mum and Alfie will be coming with me again. We are booked for the end of the month, and the meantime, I’ve been following everyone’s visits intently!

Love, Lucy xx