Gorcombe Extreme Sports - Blandford Forum

Dawn S.

Had a fantastic time with my niece who is 6, she had so much fun and thoroughly enjoyed the foot- golf then archery. We have found that she is remarkably good at archery - that was her first time. After we finished we all enjoyed a lovely meal in the cafe - all staff at the site welcoming, friendly and helpful. Nice to be joined by the resident dogs 🐶 who came to say hello 🐾 - many thanks to all

Emily

Came as part of a big group - the staff leading the show were so disinterested- seemed like they couldn’t wait to get rid of us! Activities were expensive and definitely were not good value for money. Genuinely baffled by the other good reviews. The obstacle course was £35 and extremely disappointing. My local kids playground had better obstacle courses. It was honestly a bit embarrassing. The website is vague and doesn’t describe much about it because in short - there isn’t anything on the course worth shouting about. There were no demos or anything, and some people in our group got hurt as the instructors couldn’t even be arsed to demonstrate the activities properly. I did the rage karting and we definitely didn’t get the amount of laps we were promised. Avoid this place like the plague if you like spending your cash on things that are worth it. This place isn’t it

Miriam J. S.

My group got charged £95 for 5 obstacles without instruction/tips or competition. An archery shoot out with very minimal instruction, and a rage karting session of 7 laps where most of the helmets were missing visors and there was no lap timer etc. Incredibly overpriced. Wouldn't recommend.

Elisabeth S.

**Edit: I'm downgrading to 1 star because of shockingly terrible and defensive customer service (see response to this review). Our group is an amazing group of people so I'm highly displeased we've been treated this way rather than see the owners try to patch things up.**

I want to be able to recommend this business to everyone, as they have a wide variety of extreme sports which are right up my alley, but I'm afraid I can't recommend them right now and I can only give them 2 stars.

While I enjoyed my visit overall, I found it to be poor value for money (high cost for what you get) and I found there to be several maintenance and staff instruction issues that need to be tended to for the grounds and activities to be safer. Of course, the nature of these types of activities implies health and safety risks, but the business owners and staff can definitely do their part to improve the quality of their equipment and activity instruction to help prevent accidents and injuries from the outset.

Management have told me they're tending to the maintenance points I brought up immediately, so here's hoping they follow through on that as promised, so you can feel more confident about their offerings than I currently can.

Ryan H.

Incredible place! Great time had by all! 5 in our group did the go carting the track is brilliant fun loved the off roading buggies. Cannot recommend enough. The staff were friendly and helpful in the unfortunate event that a buggy broke down. Has a wonderful little cafe selling cold and hot drinks as well as decadent ice cream. Really picturesque part of the world when you sit outside the cafe taking in the farmland scenery. Dogs are welcome as well what more could you ask for.

Marie N.

Poor value for money! I went as part of a big group of sporty adults and we were all disappointed. The ‘challenge course’ only had 5 obstacles and they’re not much more challenging than things you could find in a big children’s playground, with no specialist equipment (eg harnesses) or instruction required. In fact, the instructors barely added any value- they seemed bored and keen to get rid of us. Many of the masks for karting etc were broken and the overalls were still wet. They took ages with us standing around signing their waivers and then rushed us on the 5 obstacles. There weren’t enough arrows or things to make the bow and arrow tag more fun; no overtaking/ racing or even time tracking allowed on the karts, and people felt they didn’t get their allotted laps. Just overall disappointing. If it had cost about 1/4 of the price it may have been worth it.

Cumar V.

TLDR: would highly discourage people from going due to inadequate equipment and time for activities considering the cost, and the apathetic behaviour of the staff running the obstacle course. I don't understand how this place has such a high rating.

In more detail, I paid £95 going as part of a package deal in a large group (around 25) to do the challenge course, rage karting and archery tag.

The challenge course consisted of 5 things most of which we had one go on with no demonstrations beforehand. These were some monkeys bars, some tyres hanging off ropes we had try to step across, a tractor tyre flipping challenge in teams, an 'electric' fence challenge where you had to avoid brushing some wires where the bigger challenge was avoiding what looked like stinging nettles that had grown in the area we were supposed crawl/dip through. Multiple attempts were allowed on the A-frame but considering there was no landing pad at the bottom and I had seen the apathetic attitude of the staff when one of the group hurt their ankle, I was reluctant to take my chances.

In the rage karting, no balaclavas were provided so which is not good considering we were putting on used sweaty dirty helmets. For gloves, we had to find a pair from a pile of random gloves in a drawer - I couldn't so ended up using a mismatched set. I wasn't counting the laps myself but the experience ended quickly and others in the group said they counted only 5 which was less than promised. I would say the activity itself was good (other than being short as mentioned) and the instructors also.

In the archery tag, there were no masks that could fit glasses underneath so I had to go without glasses. Other than that the activity was fine, albeit difficult for a novice to fire the arrows and fairly short and a little basic (2 games on a flat field).

In summary, I definitely regretted going- I expected a lot more. I'd say £60 would have been fair had there been better instructors for the obstacle course.

Edit in response to the reply from the owners:

I appreciate it is testing times and a difficult job to run the centre/a large group, and that we were the last group of the day. I also regret not contacting you directly first - it didn't occur to me before I wrote this review.

I think everything in my review is fair. Re: complaining on the day, the attitude of some of the instructors made me reluctant and it was only the obstacle course (the first activity) which had any instructor issues that a complaint to the manager would solve. The others activities were instructed/marshalled well enough.

I was just an attendee so can't comment on booking time/changes on the day/the offer to split groups on the obstacle course (nothing was said to me). I arrived at quarter to 3 and left at quarter to 6.

I just felt what was provided was not good value and the attitude of the staff when one of the group got injured was especially bad (no checking in, had to ask for an ice pack and it took a while for it to arrive and was half melted).

james M.

Did some archery tag and I felt the guys running it could have put a little energy into the session to make it fun. We stood there shooting each other with a lack of arrows and there was definitely two instances where I stood still for a whole minute. There could have been a couple of obstacles or objectives to spice things up. I felt a bit of a mug when they asked to collect the equipment and I was the only one who did it whilst the staff walked off.

I watched on as our group did the obstacle course which for £35 per person to do 5 things was pretty poor value. Maybe £10 better reflects the quality of the course.