Sellers clear the house
A loft, a garage, a spare room back. Cash in your pocket by lunchtime for things that were only gathering dust.
Milton Keynes
Get ready to live it all over again.
The car boot is back at the Bowl. Set an alarm you will regret and come and find something.
March 2020
It closed on a Sunday and never opened again.
The lockdown shut the gates and that was that. The stalls came down, the field went quiet, and the Sunday that had run for years simply stopped happening.
Morrisons tried. IKEA tried. Fair play to both. But if you grew up here you know the difference between a car park and the Bowl.
This is the bit where that changes.
Loaded up, ready to go
Why a car boot
Everybody leaves with something.
Buyers find the good stuff
Nothing online gives you the moment you spot the thing across a field. You cannot search for what you did not know you wanted.
Nothing goes to landfill
Every boot that empties is a skip that stays empty. It is the oldest kind of recycling and still the best one.
On site
Sorted before you arrive.
A field is only a field until somebody thinks about the morning properly.
- Toilets with hand washing
- Parking on site
- Hot food and proper tea
- First aid on the ground
- Stewards directing traffic
- Level ground for setting up
- Room for vans and trailers
- Space to get a pram through
Facilities are planned for the Bowl and will be confirmed once the venue is signed off.
Got a field?
All new venue ideas welcome.
The Bowl is where this starts, not where it stops. If you know a site that could hold a proper car boot, we would like to hear about it.
Playing fields, showgrounds, big car parks, anywhere with room to park a few hundred cars and a way in and out. Bring us the place and we will look at it seriously.
Tell us about it
Email the team 07553 195055No forms, no fuss. Tell us roughly where it is and how much room there is.
The venue
Milton Keynes Bowl.
Watling StreetElfield Park
Milton Keynes
MK5 8AA
Directions open in Google Maps and route you from wherever you are.
Before you come
The things people always ask.
The venue is still being confirmed. The moment the date is signed off it goes on this page, and it will be announced everywhere else at the same time.
No. Turn up, pay at the gate, back the car into a space and open the boot. That is the whole system and it has not needed changing since 1987.
Pitch and entry prices are set once the venue is agreed. They will be published here before the first sale, not sprung on anybody at the gate.
Bring cash. Most sellers are somebody's mum with a biscuit tin for a till, not a card machine. Small notes and coins go a lot further than a fifty.
It goes ahead. It is a field in England, so we would never open otherwise. Very bad weather or soft ground can stop a sale, and if that happens it gets posted as early as we can manage.
Yes, on a lead. Bring water in warm weather, because there is very little shade out on an open field.
Household goods, clothes, toys, books, tools, the lot. There are things nobody may sell at a car boot, and the full list is on the trading policy.
See you at the Bowl.
Bring cash, bring bags, bring somebody who will talk you out of the second one.
The Bowl, Watling Street, Elfield Park, Milton Keynes, MK5 8AA
Keep an eye out
The date lands here first.
We will not be updating this page every day, so the social pages are where the day to day goes once they are up. Opening day gets announced here and there at the same time.
Social pages are being set up now. This is where the links will live.