Back to blogging after a long week of heat, socialising and no sleep! And now there’s a tube strike! Woohoo… Or boohoo for the majority trying to get home tonight. So I’m taking this advantage to lighten up the mood by posting about a fruit farm. ^_^

Yep. There are farms on the outskirts of London!! Believe it or not we do have cows, sheep and horses living in our forever growing city. That’s in Zone 6 for people who travel on the Tube (and for old time Londoners – hey, I’m not that old! :p).

I decided to go to a PYO farm (pick your own) with MummyGeek where you basically pick your own fruits and vegetables. Have I ever told you my mother grew up in a farm in Hong Kong? Probably not. She’s never to been to a farm in England so I thought I’ll take her, tick things off her list… besides I didn’t want to go to a dragon boat race (maybe we’ll go next year). 

The nearest PYO farm to us is Hewitt’s Farm which is located in the Bromley / Kent area. You can easily get a train from London Bridge (likely from Platform 1) and then getting off at Knockholt Station. Unfortunately we missed the straight train and changed at Orpington Station. We arrived at Knockholt Station around 10.40ish. 

From here we didn’t know our way as there are no signs or buses that head that way. We met a family heading the same way but they wanted to go via a golf field that had no signage so it would’ve been difficult to find the way. In the end I asked a person who was waiting for a lift the way and he told me the motorway route. It’s not hard and only takes 15-20 minutes.

So you turn left from the main street of the station, keep walking until you see a crossroad, then turn a left. There are no pavements so please be careful as cars go through this part.

Keep walking until you reach a fast roundabout… cars are constantly zooming past so please be utterly careful when crossing over!! 

You will see a sign for Hewitt’s Farm tell you to go left… just keep walking in that direction. 

Unfortunately you have to cross another road so be very careful again whilst crossing. Treacherous motorways!!

Finally you will reach one car entrance to enter… 

Entry is free into Hewitt’s Farm, however if you want to pick berries using their boxes / bowls you will need to pay for these… smallest one is 20p, middle one is 50p and the largest plastic bowl is £1. We got two middle ones.

So in we go and we turned left towards the strawberry fields. We kept going left until we reached the almost ripe strawberries… we started picking and even met the family at the station who took the golf field route. ^_^ Pick, pick, pick… MummyGeek didn’t pick too many and I just went on picking…

We decided to move to a different part of the farm and check what was growing. Nothing was ripe yet… 😦

Finally we headed to another part of the farm where there were cherry tomatoes growing but also not ripe… 

We then saw lots of mange tout that weren’t picked. So we picked a lot! No one likes mange tout!!

I headed for another section and I asked someone what these fruits were… gooseberries she said… you have to cook them and add lots of sugar. If you eat them raw you will be left with a horrified look as they are sour. 😛 No thanks!

Well it started to rain so it was time to go… Before you leave you have to pay for what you picked. They weigh the fruit and veg… In total it cost around £15+. That’s £7.50ish per box. It was worth it as this is the amount you would pay in the supermarket… well MummyGeek has free travel so she’s allowed to have fun in a farm.

Finally we headed back and went the way we came. We just made it in time for the straight train to London Bridge. Woohoo! What a great day for farming. 😀

Address: Court Rd, Bromley, Greater London BR6 7Q4

Tel: 07768 105669

Nearest Station: Knockholt

Opening times: 9am – 5.30pm (last entry 5pm)

Website: http://www.hewittsfarm.co.uk/