[Iain]

Came back from a weekend away and have noticed some patches on my potatoes.

Some plants had died off over the past couple of weeks but I didn't really take much notice as there was plenty of health ones left, but now most of these have some patches on them.

I'm assuming blight in its early stages? Can anyone confirm / deny from the attached photos?

[Iain]

Well it seems it was blight. It got a lot worse a couple of days later, so we dug up the potatoes underneath and they actually, more or less seemed fine, especially the Epicure 1st early ones.

So we had a version of Poor Man's Potatoes last night, which went down a treat

[James Kilkelly, was GPI.]

Good to hear they went down well Iain.
That's usually the way alright...... If you find blight on the foliage and you anticipate your potato yield is acceptable, then I would always “bite the bullet” and cut away the stalks.
Wait for about two weeks, then using a garden fork, gently loosen the potatoes from the ground discarding the few that the blight may have got to.

My article about blight control here........ Controlling potato blight.