Last Updated on 31 October 2023 by Colette
This post features a gifted experience & affiliate links
I’ve long been a fan of a National Trust day out – of exploring gardens and woodland, of scones and hot chocolates and gorgeous little gift shops. With that in mind, I was really looking forward to our October half term visit to National Trust Hinton Ampner – visiting a National Trust site we’ve never been to before and at such a gorgeous time of year, was always going to be a hit with the family.
Although dogs are welcome at National Trust Hinton Ampner, they are not allowed in the house or café so our visit was very much focused on the outdoor spaces – which, if I’m honest, suits our family best anyway – we rarely bother to explore the houses themselves when visiting National Trust sites. Some would say we are missing out, but I know that houses and museums hold little interest to my three who are far happier in the outdoors, admiring stunning views and exploring beautiful spaces.
With it being October half term, National Trust Hinton Ampner were in full Halloween / autumnal celebration mode with a Hallowe’en Trail and Harvest Displays. We picked up a Pumpkin Trail sheet at reception (priced at £2 each) and set off hunting out the numbered pumpkins and completing the tasks.
Some of the tasks were puzzles, such as unjumbling the letters to make a word, others were mindful activities such as writing a list of things that made you happy or physical challenges like running as fast as you could between two lightening bolts on the lawns! The final activity on the list was casting a spell whilst making as much noise as possible and, whilst the trail is probably aimed at children much younger than mine, they all still took great pleasure in banging the pans and shouting out the words to the spell!
Having the Pumpkin Trail to complete gave our walk a focus and made sure we visited parts of National Trust Hinton Ampner that we might not otherwise have discovered on a first visit. Whilst Ben wasn’t really bothered about completing the trail itself, he was more than happy to help Amy out with her map reading skills. Amy was totally on board with finding all the pumpkins and doing the activities so in that sense I’d suggest it is a great activity for children of primary age.
Our visit to Hinton Ampner was relatively short as we had other activities planned for the afternoon and I was sad that we didn’t have more time there. It would have been lovely to pack a hot picnic and spend the day pottering around and exploring everything Hinton Ampner had to offer.
I especially loved the walled gardens – encouraging the children to spot and name familiar vegetables or testing my own knowledge (thanks to google lens I was able to confirm a couple of plants I had guessed correctly). Dave hadn’t realised before that pumpkins grew on vines so was fascinated to see them lying in their patch in the garden! Visiting in the autumn meant we could see lots of fruit and vegetables that were near ready for harvest as well as seeing the very last of late blooming flowers like dahlias. I’d love to be able to visit the garden in the spring / summer too to be able to see it in full bloom.
Of course autumn is a glorious time to be visiting woodland – and whilst it had been quite a damp morning with a lot of rain having fallen over night, we were lucky to avoid any rain. Autumn itself seems to be taking hold quite late this year with the colours on the trees still being quite green and most trees holding onto their leaves tightly, I’m sure we’ll see a dramatic change over the next week or so!
National Trust Hinton Ampner is free for National Trust Members otherwise standard admission charges apply.
You can find details of more National Trust days out in Hampshire here.
You can read about what else we got up to on our stay in Hampshire here:
Gilbert White’s House and Gardens
Watercress Line Heritage Railway
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