Ice Driver » Testimonials

Paul Waine Visits Ice Driver

Neill — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 12:13:20 +0000

Paul Waine, head of RE Group, visited Ice Driver this past season and was good enough to provide his views on our activities and gave us some great feedback from a corporate viewpoint. Here’s just a few of the comments Paul was good generous enough to allow us to share online with you:

An excellent all-round experience and what a fantastic way to build team spirit.

The course, choice of cars and overall experience has obviously been constructed by lovers of cars and their enthusiasm for the sport is infectious. If you are experienced in driving you are encouraged to get the most from the car and you will be rewarded by the guidance of the instructor who races the cars on a daily basis. If this is your first time in the seat of a rally car, your fear will soon be dispelled by the patient and encouraging words from your instructor –BRAKE!!!!
3 different cars and 3 different experiences all offered something for everyone in a mixed age group. The driving is exhilarating and exhausting whatever level you are at and the cosy, relaxed feel of the accommodation is the perfect tonic after your day of high octane racing. Relax in the Jacuzzi or sauna before taking in the freshly cooked three course meal, in the large dining room.
From the collection at the airport, the whole weekend ran like clockwork, and with such a helpful and welcoming team it allowed the group to benefit from the quality time made available.
As for the locals…. It’s not often you get an opportunity to meet a World Rally Champion walking down a road at night with his family, and him stop introduce himself and talk about ice driving!!

My experience? – the best team/corporate do I’ve been on

Let’s face it, it started off with a snowmobile trek in the dark with a leader who let us go as fast as possible!
Excellent cars and instructors who made me feel really comfortable despite my obvious incompetence! The instructors were fantastic! Levels of encouragement ranged from ‘give it more, more, more more, LESS!’; brake, BRAKE!!; from the BMW, Subaru and Focus respectively.
The facilities were excellent with the Jacuzzi and sauna all adding to the team-building experience. Sharing our experiences around the large dining table over freshly cooked food added to the weekend, and the tales of our driving got ever more thrilling…….all in all the best team building exercise ever!

Views from the Northern Boys

Neill — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:53:26 +0000

We just realised that this lovely email from one of our previous guests didn’t get copied across into our new website design last winter, so here’s the full, unedited opinion of what they thought of their trip to Ice Driver in Sweden.

“What a fantastic weekend we had with the Ice Driver crew! My mate Paul & I organised our weekend ourselves and not being part of a corporate group was definitely the way to go for a couple of blokes intent on a “Petrol Heads v Dancing on Ice” weekend.

Picked up at the station like VIP’s, we arrived at the picturesque lakeside hotel where the extra special treatment continued from the minute we stepped through the door. Our Swedish hosts made Gordon Ramsey’s place look like KFC as they plied us with gourmet dish after gourmet dish – don’t let anyone tell you it’s just raw herrings and ryvitas, these people know how to dine!

Next day it was on to the main event. At -20° Centigrade, it was colder than a polar bear’s paw, but that didn’t deter the Ice Driver crew from organising a brilliant day on the Ice. Did I mention the ice? There’s miles and miles and miles of it and right in the middle, is the demanding track where we were to learn the black art of balancing a car on the throttle with more finesse than a weekend at the Royal Ballet. Andy, Jamie and Tim did us proud, with clear, confidence inspiring instruction when we needed it and plenty of banter when we didn’t listen well enough! Hard to describe just how much fun this is, but forget dreary track days with corporate instructors back in Blighty; it’s like night and day. This is something you’ll remember for the rest of your life, unlike a wet afternoon at Oulton Park….

We added a Snow Mobile Safari to our Ice Driver Rear Wheel Drive Day (Front Wheel Drive being for the mentally challenged of course) and what a blast that was. Siggi our guide, was great bloke with lots of local knowledge and a twisted sense of humour. Add this to the fact that he is a Swede who speaks English with an American accent, whilst wearing an unfeasibly furry hat and you know it’s going to be a big grin. Miles of deserted forest, plains and frozen lakes. From slow technical sections through to flat out blasts across the lakes, with a cheeky visit to the local village, lack of variety is one thing we didn’t suffer from on this outing.

Due to a complication with the weather (or was it Mercury in retrograde or some other random event?), our return travel plans were trashed, but once again the Ice Driver Crew came up trumps, by sorting a complete new route and itinerary at very short notice ensuring we arrived back home safe and well.”

“Would I recommend it? HELL Yeah!”

Tony Brock, Manchester

Want a great corporate event? Read this..

Neill — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:28:13 +0000

Here’s what one of our corporate clients thinks about bringing his team to Ice Driver each winter:

“Icedriver has become a recognised internal top reward for high performance employees.
The whole experience is just light years ahead of anything we’ve done previously and that includes high profile F1 track days.
Andy and his team have a genuine desire to make you have fun and especially share the secrets of driving fast on a frozen lake – quite honestly there just isn’t anywhere you can do this and our guys just want to keep coming back!”

Cedric Berner, Carglass Switzerland

Many thanks for the kind words, guys. We have to say that your entrance into the bar that evening was truly memorable……

Is Ice Driver A Good Drift School?

Neill — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:23:30 +0000

The most fashionable way to drive sideways these days is in drifting. It’s become massively popular worldwide and several motorsport competitors we know are now actively involved in drift championships across Europe. So does Ice Driver make a good venue to get some practice, tuition and experience drifting during the winter? Here’s what Belgian drifter, Pieter Van Hoorick had to say after coming to Ice Driver:

Dear Andy, Neill, Tim, James and Beefe,

I would like to thank you all for the fantastic two days I spend in Sweden last week. From the pick-up till the drop-off at the airport a few days later everything was perfect. The only thing I missed were some Sweedish blondes .
The hotel is really beautiful and the food was more than ok. Coming from Belgium, I know what good food tastes like…
But I was with Ice Driver to learn and to improve my drifting. The track was super: very variated with slower and faster sections, challenging in the sense that it is quite technical and it’s not easy to make a perfect lap. In the end I succeeded thanks to the professional built-up I got from Tim on the first day and thanks to Andy who on the second day fired me up a little and allowed me to get a bit more speed on the track.
What did I learn ? Firstly to drive on ice with very performant tyres, a whole new expierience for me but with this I got away quite easely. Left foot braking was not completely new to me but I learned to “place” the car in the corners and I got a lot of practice with LFB. I also learned and practised to have more contol of the speed which is very important in drifting. So, now I‘m curious and looking forward to see how I will do on a dry track.. That will be in two weeks at the Nürburgring (no competiotion, just free drifting).

Kind regards,
Pieter Van Hoorick