Wyboston Lakes is a training, conference and events venue set within 380 acres with excellent transport links to London and the rest of the country – it really does have something for everyone. We held our April FAM trip here and honestly the venue exceeded all our expectations, we all left feeling super inspired.
We kicked off the FAM at the Woodlands Event Centre which has recently had a complete refurbishment and houses 16 flexible event spaces, a restaurant and bar, outdoor space and 120 bedrooms providing you with self-contained event space. The Woodlands Event Centre allows you to hold a variety of events taking advantage of the variety of spaces that are both traditional but also creative and all with excellent technology in-built within the rooms. Upon arrival, we were directed to the coffee shop that provides delegates with coffee (and good coffee), soft drinks, cakes, cookies, and fruit throughout the event; there are many of these coffee areas/carts etc throughout the areas within the event centre. After fuelling up on coffee, we were greeted by our amazing hosts – Rosie, Carol and Tony – who provided us with an overview of Wyboston Lakes, their approach to events during COVID and going forward and their sustainability approach. Within the Woodlands Event Centre, there is the Olive Restaurant which can be sectioned off for smaller or larger groups and is the area where lunches and dinners are served for your events. We were really impressed with the variety and quality of food we enjoyed for lunch, your delegates will not go hungry here! Luckily for us, with 16 event spaces to see within this building, we had plenty of steps to walk off our lunch!
Sustainability is a big focus at Wyboston Lakes and their approach is one of the best approaches we’ve seen so far the team have been rewarded with three awards in this area. As well as understanding how the venue is being more sustainable, you can work with the team to incorporate this into your event. To offset our carbon footprint of travelling to the venue, we planted a number of trees within the grounds at Wyboston Lakes. This was simply amazing, we all loved getting involved and knowing we were making a difference to our planet – it left us all wanting to look into how we can do this for future events we manage. This would be an excellent and unique networking break where your delegates could enjoy being outside with their colleagues/event attendees whilst planting trees and discussing learnings from the content sessions.
After feeling all earthly, we checked into our bedrooms at the Waterfront Hotel which is a short walk from the event centre. The bedrooms are very comfortable with all the amenities you need for a comfortable stay including a large desk and strong Wi-Fi to be able to work in your room if needed. Within the hotel, there is a spa; the co-working space which is launching soon; the Gravel Pit restaurant which overlooks one of the lakes and also a large event space that again overlooks the lake with ample natural daylight.
Feeling all refreshed, we headed to the Willows Training Centre which has been designed for learning and training events. Again, all spaces have gone through a recent refurbishment and they all look brilliant. Each room has a unique creative feel providing lots of options for the right setting and atmosphere for the learning and training events you are holding. The tech within the spaces is excellent and all the necessities you need for team building in a training centre are there from scribble boards, interactive whiteboards, Apple TV etc. As well as event spaces, similar to the event centre there is self-contained accommodation, restaurant and bar providing everything under one roof. We enjoyed a tour of the spaces via a treasure hunt to collect clues and “treasure” to take us to the final destination in the centre for our cocktail making masterclass! The cocktail masterclass is provided by their own mixologists and can easily be incorporated into your event. They were excellent at being fully inclusive with both alcoholic and non-alcoholic cocktails being made – and not just with juices with non-alcoholic prosecco/gin etc. Within the loft space where we held the masterclass, there are a variety of team games that we enjoyed as a group. The evening was wrapped up with dinner in the Gravel Pit Restaurant in the Waterfront Hotel. We enjoyed a lovely dinner soaking up the atmosphere of the restaurant washed down with drinks and lots of laughs and chats as a group.
We ended our FAM on Saturday morning with a feel-good feel by partnering with O3E, a team-building company making a difference by offering team building activities that give back to the community. We built a number of bikes for Kings Arms Project. We highly recommend looking at how you can incorporate this into your own events.
We all left the FAM feeling inspired by the impressive event spaces as well as feeling very wholesome by giving back to the planet and the local community! If you’ve not yet seen Wyboston Lakes, we highly recommend that you do so you can leave with the same feelings we did. Please do reach out to us if you need an introduction to our hosts. Head to our Instagram page to see even more photos on our reel sharing our experience!
