Iron Pit Woods Corby

Northants Telegraph

The new Iron Pit Woods Adventure in Corby held a corporate opening event at the Holiday Inn in Corby

Transcript

00:00 We've had this woodland here ever since the hotel was built.

00:12 Woodland's hundreds of years old and we've been asked to do something with it for the

00:17 past however many years.

00:19 We got this concept, we searched high and low for ideas.

00:23 Martin the general manager went to 17, 18, 19 different sites across the UK, found that

00:30 this was a good piece of business to get involved with and we thought we'd give it a go.

00:36 And the plan is hopefully in the future this is a success and we deliver it and expand

00:42 further on.

00:43 So going forward we want to make this a bigger adventure for us with our corporate days,

00:48 birthdays, general members of the public who come in.

00:51 We want to make this an activity hub for people of Corby and further afield to come into.

00:57 We're looking at rock climbing walls, axe throwing, different kind of corporate events.

01:01 We're looking at the off-road kind of buggies, karting and stuff like that.

01:07 So if we can find room for it, and this is successful, I said we'll look into anything,

01:11 but the rock climbing site is something we're looking at at the moment and hopefully further

01:16 down the line it will happen.

01:18 We're hoping to keep out the summer, start the summer holidays and the plan is to make

01:22 that summer holiday a success.

01:24 And then we can sit down after that, we can manage our football, we can look at our forecast

01:29 budgets, see how we've performed, see how the site has performed against our forecasting

01:34 budget and again if it is a success then that gives us every opportunity and every right

01:39 to expand and look at different options for the future, not just for the development of

01:45 the hotel but for the development of Corby, the future of Corby and again like I said

01:49 it will become an activity hub for outdoor activities which Corby probably lacks to a

01:55 degree and we want to be that kind of main focal point for that.

01:59 I think Corby's lacked it for a long time.

02:01 There's nothing, I'm aware of this, an outdoor activity centre.

02:05 There's plenty of indoor places, there's country parks, there's nice walks, but there's nowhere

02:10 to come outside and have a team building event, birthday parties outside.

02:16 Anywhere local to here, everything's inside, little scene, so we're happy to say that we're

02:22 probably within an hour, we're going to be one of hopefully the nicest and best outdoor

02:27 activity centres that Corby needs and further afield in North Amsterdam.

02:32 I in Pitwoods, isn't this wonderful?

02:34 I don't think we've had this kind of investment in an activity that's you know based around

02:40 family and social life so this is really quite good.

02:44 Yeah, I think we need more varied options.

02:48 You know, when I've done things in the past with young people I've specifically asked

02:53 you know what do you use and what do you want to see more of and there's a couple of gaps.

02:58 So we've got a couple of gaps in people knowing about clubs, we've got huge gaps in the corporate

03:02 market where young people are happy to go and spend a bit of money to enjoy their time

03:06 but it's not available to them.

03:08 I think the course is very good, I will claim the hole in one, I've had one of them but

03:13 yeah it's really quite fun, it's really imaginative, it's not just a flat game of golf, there's

03:19 lots of intricate moving parts.

03:22 So the Holiday Inn approached us about a project here in the woods here so we took it from

03:29 concept design where we sketch it all out, come up with some cool ideas, then it goes

03:36 into planning and then once we've got the planning it goes into technical design and

03:40 then into production as you see it now.

03:43 Once we get going we like to try and deliver projects on time as everyone wants.

03:49 So yeah it's probably like a three to four month programme to build from starting on

03:53 site.

03:54 The planning probably took longer than the build time to be fair.

03:59 Really happy with the look and the feel, it's a great atmosphere especially as it's in the

04:02 woods with the high ropes and up in the treetops and it's with the combination of the two activities

04:08 they work really well and you can have Nan and Grandad on the floor going around playing

04:13 the golf while the kids are up in the high ropes and you get that integration where people

04:16 talking to each other from the two heights and it's two activities and it's great.

04:22 It works really well together and it's something that we've recently started doing and I think

04:26 it's something that hopefully we're going to do a lot more of in the future.

04:30 The area of Corby, I think this is going to be a great addition for this area and I think

04:36 the hotel if this goes well they would love to expand and hopefully we can be a part of

04:40 that with them too.

04:43 Hopefully the hotel as well, this is quite an unusual thing for a hotel to do and hopefully

04:49 that's something that we can maybe do with more hotels especially the IHG brand going

04:54 forward it would be really good.

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