Nottingham Dirt Buggies at Lockwell Hill

Currently3.08976660682/5 Stars
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by
Simon Wyndham

The first time that I visited the Lockwell Hill Activity Centre in Nottingham was on a friends stag do in 2006. The main attraction for us were the off road buggies and quad bikes, alhough the centre itself also offers air rifle shooting, archery, and this year they have announced an "It's a Knockout" style fun course. The Dirt Buggies are actually a seperate part of the centre and is in fact run independently.

Ever since I watched "Run The Gauntlet" in the 1980's I have always wanted to have a go at driving an off road buggy. On the stag do there were around 8 people in our group. The buggy driving is split up into two parts. The first one involves you driving around a short looping track to get use to the handling. This is done two buggies at a time to stop things becoming overcrowded.

Racing is not allowed, but even still this was a heck of a lot of fun! It had been raining for the past few days leading up to our visit, so the track was extremely muddy. The buggies are not the fastest things in the world, and they understeer like crazy, but I can guarantee that it will take a while for you to wipe the grin off your face after having a go in one! I was lucky in that I had ended up in a new buggy that had not been derestricted in power yet. However when I was driving around the course I noticed that despite having my foot buried into the accelerator pedal I was going much slower than my track mate!

I soon discovered that I had a flat tyre and had to be retired from the course. No matter, I had a lot of fun while it lasted. These things can't be helped.

Anyway, after getting thoroughly plastered in mud, and after the others had had their turn, we were then led on the buggy Safari. This is a much longer course, which involved four of us being led around the track by one of the centre staff who was riding a quad bike. I was under the impression that the basic course was muddy until I went on this much longer one! One section involved us going along a long straight that had a large hump/jump on it. I gunned the throttle and went flying over the jump. Unbeknown to me there was a gigantic, very deep, very muddy "puddle" of water on the other side!

We all got absolutely covered from this. In fact I couldn't see because the mud had completely covered my helmet visor! The rest of the course was similarly muddy. In fact I can say that not even the Commando Challenge came close to how muddy you will become while using these machines!

Unfortunately mechanical issues with the lead quad bike prevented us going around this track twice like the other group. Again, annoying, but such things cannot be helped. The mud and water must really take their toll on the vehicles.

After we had played around with the air rifle shooting range, we moved onto the quad bike course. I was eager to have a go on these because the first time I tried at a centre in Oxfordshire I was absolutely rubbish. Quad bikes take a bit of skill to handle properly, and they can feel unstable if you do not know how to use your weight. Luckly I had been heavily involved in making a documentary about Matt Coulter, a well known quad bike stuntman who had given me some tips on how to ride the things.

We were once again split up into two groups of four. They asked who had ridden on quads before and put the least experienced riders at the front of the line of quads in each group. In my opinion this was a mistake because it meant that the riders who had experience were going to be held back by the less experienced riders. In the case of quad bikes this often means slowing down to a crawl! It would have been better, given our groups experience distribution, to have one group of inexperienced riders, and another one of people who had ridden before.

While riding the course I held back to create some space so that I could power along the straights and around some of the sweeping corners. Once you can distribute your weight properly you can go really fast. My bike did keep conking out though, and I kept being told not to drive through the puddles as this was what was causing it. Somehow I doubt this because quad bike races wouldn't be much fun if the bike kept breaking down after each puddle!

That said the stag day was great fun. The staff at the centre were very friendly and professional, so much so that a friend and I decided to go back and have another go at the buggies in 2008.

We decided that we would take the half hour option. Once again we went around the training course to begin with. Annoyingly I had chosen a helmet with a really loose visor. Ideally you'd have the visor half way up. This way your eyes get protected from flying mud and stones, and the visor itself doesn\'t get a chance to fog up. Unfortunately every time I went over a bump my visor closed and fogged up, which stopped me from seeing anything at all! I had to keep stopping to raise it again. Even in the fully up position it kept falling down. Highly annoying.

We then got to go on the long course again, led by a man on a quad bike. The course was just as muddy as it was the last time, although dissappointingly we were never taken over the big hump/jump! This was one of the main reasons why we wanted to go back in the first place! We did end up driving on much more technical parts of the course than on our previous visit however.

Once again we got absolutely covered in mud and had a great time! Once again the staff were extremely friendly and professional. Just a couple of notes for if you decide to visit. While the centre does provide some heavy duty waterproofs I would recommend taking your own if they do not contain trouser pocket access. The reason is because the provided waterproofs have openings in the fly, and because they have been used in the wet and muddy conditions so much many of them do not close properly (and even if they did they have many access points for water and mud).

So I would recommend either taking your own heavy duty waterproofs with no openings, or to wear a one piece coverall over your main clothes and then the provided centre waterproofs over that. Otherwise do not hold out any hope of visiting the pub on the way home. Also take a change of socks and shoes. You have been warned!

Do I recommend this centre? Absolutely!

Visit the Nottingham Dirt Buggies website for more information.