Halloween at Upton Country Park

Posted on by Juliet Frost

I don’t really celebrate Halloween. My parents never let me trick or treat as a kid and we never carved pumpkins either so those are both things I just don’t do. Well, by the time I was old enough to not need their permission to trick or treat, I was too old for it – it’s not a thing adults are meant to do. I put on my red cloak and sometimes a mask and scare the kids when I open the door and that’s about the extent of my Halloween.

But this year I’m doing a bit more. That’s mostly thanks to the monthly Rebel challenge badge, Halloween Rebel. But it’s also in part thanks to the internet for the orange-tinted pressure that appears this time of year.

So I had my first pumpkin photoshoot! There’s no shortage of farms which offer pick-your-own pumpkin and take your photos in our field but I’ve never wanted to pick pumpkins. Accidental well-meaning food waste is one thing but knowing no one will eat the pumpkin and knowing that, at best, it’ll sit outside until it rots, I couldn’t bring myself to actually get a pumpkin. So when I spied on Facebook Upton Country Park‘s half term and Halloween activities, which included a pumpkin photoshoot and all for the price of a car parking ticket, it seemed the answer.

The new visitor centre at Upton Country Park. It's actually still being built. It's a stone and wood building with a slanted flat roof and the name of the place carved into stone blocks in the side.

I googled “what to wear to a pumpkin patch”, added my witch’s hat and some orange battery lights threaded into my hair – when can you be extra if not Halloween? – and recruited my sister to act as photographer and off we went. She had a witch’s hat too but while mine is the proper and correct black, hers is pale beige.

Me, in a witch's hat and a long tartan cardigan with jeans and brown leather hiking boots, sitting on a haybale surrounded by pumpkins. My hands are full of tiny baby pumpkins (which may or may not be plastic - I couldn't tell).

The pumpkin photoshoot is a pile of pumpkins on a pile of hay bales. Oh, it’s pretty enough and it saved me the effort of deciding how or where to pose. I’m not accustomed to posing. I sat. I gathered up a handful of miniature pumpkins – still don’t know if they’re real or not – and made faces in the direction of the camera while Amy tried to get me in without getting any of the kids in. Parents, I know kids these days must always do whatever they want, but keep them out of my photoshoot. They don’t actually own the entire world and I was only there long enough for ten or so quick snaps. They can have their turn in literally less than a minute and it is meant for photos, I’m not just turning up and monopolising the pumpkins.

My sister sitting in the same pumpkin display. Her witch's hat is pale beige and she's wearing a matching coat and tall brown leather boots.

Another reason I’d opted for Upton Country Park was that they had a Halloween trail. I like a trail. I’ll never forget the one we went to when I was a Guide, which was a proper haunted walk in the dark and kind of actually scary. I think a trail is a great way to get outside in the autumn and enjoy an aspect of the outdoors that you might not otherwise, even that’s as simple as going outside when it’s not summer.

The first marker on the Halloween trail: an orange sign with tree silhouettes on the sides. In the middle it says that the first thing is BATS and gives some information about bats.

Halloween trails are generally meant for kids, I have to admit. Last year’s, at Arne, was great – it took all the scary and weird bits of nature and presented them as a fairly long walk. Two years ago, in fact! Why didn’t I do a trail in 2021, then? Anyway, there were beetles and spiders and toadstools and wand trees and it was great. Upton did a trail of points to find on a map to complete your spell. Four points, all within a very short and simple walk, once you’d made sense of the really-badly enlarged map and figured out where you were meant to be going.

A witch in the woods: me in my witch's hat and tartan blanket-cardigan, holding up an acorn and a twig of oak leaves.

I liked walking in the woods and we took some photos of witches in the woods while looking for the four points but it was literally four orange boards tied to trees declaring things like “the first creature for your spells is BATS” followed by a couple of sentences about the creature. At Arne, you got a full information board and there were lots of stops around a much longer walk. It really made the most of Arne’s nature reserve whereas this one really didn’t make the most of Upton Country Park’s miles of open land.

A leaf-strewen path through the woods. The woods are really on the left. On the right, a row of trees separates the path from open fields. From this angle, the trees almost turn the path into a tunnel.

Last, we went back to the cafe for a spooky drink. I’d set my heart on a Haunted Forest Hot Chocolate. From the pictures on Facebook, I’d concluded this would be a cup of hot chocolate with the word “BOO” sprinkled on top in chocolat flakes. I was wrong. That’s a coffee drink of some kind. The Haunted Forest hot chocolate has a shot of syrup that I couldn’t identify but is probably cherry, topped with squirty cream, chocolate curls and cherry sauce. I was adamant that “haunted forest” is just a name to spookify a hot chocolate and Amy was adamant that it must use the same ingredients as a Black Forest gateau, so I was sure the over-flavoured syrup was just really strong strawberry. Alas, she was right. I don’t like cherry, especially when it’s so concentrated and so overly-sweet, and I don’t like cream. So she ate all the cream off the top and I had the hot chocolate when it was cool enough.

Me with a small wooden spoon about to poke my Haunted Forest Hot Chocolate. It's in a takeaway cup, topped with cream, chocolate flakes and cherry sauce. I've taken off my blanket cardigan but not the hat and the close-up means you can now see I have tiny orange fairy lights threaded through my plaits.

Yes, I did most of it for the ‘gram, as they say. I don’t drink a lot of hot chocolate, I don’t drink other hot drinks at all and had there not been a Halloween-themed one, I wouldn’t have bothered. But I’d gone for my Instagram-inspired pumpkin photoshoot and of course I wanted the Halloween hot chocolate. But the trail, that’s all me. I might even take myself for another spooky walk in the woods before the big day – because of course I didn’t do this today. Today, Halloween, Monday 31st August, is a weekday! But today for me, right now, is the Saturday over a week before. That gives me plenty of days to do an “autumn walk” in the woods.

A tree with a crack near the bottom which a very small child could climb into. When this tree was younger and its bark less thick and gnarly, I went inside it all the time.

Judgement: I liked the opportunity for the free pumpkin photos but the trail was underwhelming. Arne was definitely better last year. By all means, go to Upton Country Park to enjoy woodland walks and birdwatching by the shore but if you’re after a Halloween walk, there are better ones.