Last Friday we held our May FAM trip at Brooklands Hotel and Mercedes-Benz World and we had the best time. I will be honest, I have lived just a 5-minute drive from both for years and have never been and I am now wondering why. The Brooklands site is home to one of Britain’s most famous racing heritage circuits and was one of the world’s first race tracks that opened in 1907. It is pretty impressive when you see it.
Our group all checked-in to their fabulous rooms by 3.00 pm before meeting up for a few glasses of champagne and our site visit. Some of the group were smart enough to arrive a little earlier and try out the spa. The spa has some amazing offers on for both leisure and groups so well worth checking that out. Our site visit around all the spaces was a welcome surprise as I have to say, I did not expect to see the amount of meeting spaces Brooklands has and I am pretty sure the group didn’t either… There are five suites in total with Brooklands being the largest. All of the meeting spaces have inbuilt av with complimentary Wi-Fi, LC projector and screen, plasmas, lapel and handheld microphones and the all-important thing that delegates simply can’t live without… NATURAL DAYLIGHT! Ha ha Every single meeting room had natural daylight which is amazing.
After our site visit, we sat down for dinner in the 1907 restaurant where we dined a la carte. The restaurant has been awarded two AA Rosettes and you can see why. I have been going on about the purple potato gnocchi I had for my starter all week. It was amazing and I want the recipe although there is no way I would be able to recreate it I am going to give it a good try.
After dinner, we moved off to the bar where the 1920’s decor meant we felt pretty glamorous sipping our cocktails. After a few drinks, a lot of non-related events chat we all went off to bed, ready for our early start and driving morning. We left the bar patrons to it – 1907 bar is fab and very buzzy. It was such a good atmosphere… It would be great for delegates after their own private dinner for those that want to carry on having a few drinks.
The next day it was up bright and early for breakfast (which was lovely, especially the sausages), before making the short 2-minute walk to Mercedes-Benz World. MBW is their purpose-built Under 17s driving facilities with handling circuits, wet skid circle, wet straight and 10-acre 0ff-road course. Hand on heart I had no idea what any of these were but now I do and oh my goodness was it fun. Our group started with a 15-minute briefing on safety procedures before we all had our own 20-minute driving experience I literally smiled the whole time. It was so much fun and I actually learnt a lot. This would be an amazing idea for a team building activity for your away days and retreats!
The staff are amazing and so well organised and I would definitely send a group back. I really loved it.
After the driving, it was off for a tour of the meeting and event spaces at MBW and there are a lot there as well. There are 12 separate event spaces and you can see their capacities here.
We all had such a good time and I was so pleased to have found another fab hotel for away days and conferences.