An exhilarating day at Land Rover Experience Eastnor

I was thrilled when I received a phone call late on Wednesday inviting me to an off road driving experience at Land Rover Experience Eastnor the following morning.  (A group of people had incredibly pulled out last minute and they had a spare vehicle and driver if I fancied making use of them, which of course I did!) My first thought was sorting out childcare for my boys. I called my hubby, excitedly told him all about it and asked if he could be around to pick up our boys from school.  The phone went deadly silent, to be honest I thought we’d lost signal, until he replied…

“If you don’t take me with you I’ll never speak to you again!”

Much to my amusement, in thirty minutes he’d changed all of his meetings (including his annual appraisal), arranged the day off work and offered the other available spot to our friend, Graham, who did the same!

Less than 14 hours later we were on our way to Eastnor Castle in Ledbury, Herefordshire.  Both men grinning like kids who had been given a day off school for a snow day. (The grins literally didn’t leave their faces all day!) To be honest I was a little apprehensive about how seriously they were going to take the challenge of testing out the full off road capabilities of Land Rovers.

Video – Highlights of our Land Rover Experience day, Eastnor 

This five minute video summarises our exhilarating (and at times absolutely petrifying!) 4×4 driving experience.  It will give you a good idea of what to expect if you were to book the Land Rover experience day at Eastnor.  This isn’t the best quality video I’ve ever put together as it was extremely bumpy (hence the shaky video footage) with lots of screaming from me, jovial chit chat and laughter from all of us in the car.  

In case you’re wondering… it was hysterical laughing from the men and sometimes nervous laughter from me, accompanied by, (as you’ll spot in the video), me clinging onto the arm of Swany, our instructor, and nearly cutting off his blood supply.  I’m not quite sure why I thought doing this would help save my life, or save the vehicle from hurtling down a hill!

As you’ll notice from the video the grounds of Eastnor Castle are absolutely stunning.  They release over 100,000 pheasants in this dedicated area of outstanding natural beauty every year so we had plenty of feathered spectators popping up whilst we were exploring the 66 miles of trails.  We also saw a herd of deer at the Eastnor Castle view point which was a lovely end to a thoroughly wonderful day.

Land Rover Experience Eastnor – What can you expect?

We were fortunate to be invited to review a full day 4×4 test drive.  The centre also offers tester drives (ideal if you just want a play around in a new Range Rover or Land Rover for an hour), half day experiences, advanced 4×4 day courses and corporate experience days. All available in a range of vehicles.

Our day started at 9am and was due to finish at 4pm.  (We had to unfortunately leave by 3pm but still managed to squeeze so much into the day).  The organisation at the centre was absolutely seamless, from our friendly greeting as we drove through the gates, a welcome hot drink and cookies in the reception area whilst we filled in some paperwork followed by a quick vehicle tour via a power point briefing.  Within 30 minutes we had set off to explore the 5,000 acre grounds of Eastnor Castle in a HSE Discovery with our instructor.

Richard and Graham are both huge Land Rover fans. They relished putting the Discovery HSE through it’s paces, particularly on the secret test facility which Jaguar Land Rover have used for decades to test the off-road capability of every new Land Rover. I loved the steep hill side descents, (not whilst I was actually going through the experience mind you, afterwards when looking back at the video footage!), driving in deep water and along the muddy trails, although it was genuinely one of the scariest things I’ve ever done.  On some of the videos you can hear me breathing as if I was going through child birth again.  There were a couple of occasions when I could quite happily have stepped out of the car and let someone else take over but I’m so glad I didn’t as I was rather proud of myself after.

We’ve considered booking a Land Rover driving experience in the past and have been put off by the cost.  At £549 per person for a full day like we experienced and £229 for a half day there’s no denying that it’s an expensive day out. Now that I’ve done it I can 100% recommend booking for a special occasion, big birthday etc. It was exhilarating to be in control of such a powerful 4×4 vehicle and drive it in terrain that you most likely wouldn’t dare drive on, even if you did own a Land Rover!

l’ll be honest, unlike Richard and Graham who can spend hours talking about the technical capabilities of a car and comparing one vehicle to another, I’m not a car enthusiast. I was still however mighty impressed with the way in which our Discovery handled the manoeuvres we put it through.

For any none car fanatics reading this and wondering if you would enjoy this experience…. Give it a go! It will push you to do something you’ll never get the chance to do, way WAY beyond your comfort zone. (As they say, pictures don’t lie. You can see the genuine fear in my eyes in the video above). I’m not exaggerating when I say it took a good hour for my heart beat to return to normal and my legs to stop shaking after being behind the wheel.

Of course you don’t need to take just my word on how exhilarating the 4 x 4 driving experience at Eastnor is, I’ve asked Richard and Graham to share their thoughts on our off road driving day…

Richard – I’ve wanted to try out the Land Rover driving experience at Eastnor for a long time, hence why I managed to juggle around work meetings quickly to visit on Thursday.  We spent the whole day there and all three of us got the chance to put the HSE Discovery to the test.  It was great to experience driving in deep mud, along ruts, wading through water up to 900mm and navigating the extreme man made test pad which was brilliant fun.

In terms of off road capability the HSE Discovery is quite simply astounding. The car was more than able to handle everything we attempted, from a 1 in 2 slope, where we used the Hill Descent Control to select a comfortable speed, while the car takes care of the rest, without touching the pedals. (This took some getting used to).  We drove through many tight spots with the wing mirror cameras pointing at the two front wheels which let us see exactly how much room we had left to manoeuvre.

We took the car to angles and situations that I would never have thought possible, from balancing the car across two diagonally opposed wheels, through to a 29degrees sideways incline, at which point the car slid down the slope sideways due to the muddy wheels. The centre console display let us see exactly what was happening with the car, from which differentials were locked through to which wheels had lost traction. It even displayed which wheels were at full extension on the suspension, (and effectively hanging!)

Another useful feature, both on and off road, was the head up display. In 4×4 mode this shows the current roll and pitch of the vehicle as well as indication of front wheel direction. On road it shows speed and typical navigation directions which I would find really handy for day to day driving.

Graham – This was my second visit to Eastnor, my first time being back in August 2016 where we had the pleasure of a Range Rover Vogue for the day.  It was great seeing what the Land Rover Discovery D5, the latest the extremely capable Discovery, could do.  Being a D3 owner myself, this was also a good opportunity to learn about the offload capabilities they both share, and the extra features a newer model has to offer.  The D5 has the latest “Terrain Response 2”, which shares most of the same features as its predecessor but with a few more bells and whistles.

The D5 feels smaller and more car like than the D3.  The interior and dash feel more refined, yet less rugged.  Land Rover certainly seem to be aiming for a more universal cockpit feel to the Range and something that is more appealing to owners more used to a normal car-like feel.  The entertainment system is certainly an improvement; the high resolution touch screen display is glorious, full glass dash is impressive to look at, and the heads up display was a useful measure to help key eyes on the road, or in our case, the muddy track and tree branches!  Another very useful feature were the wing mirror mounted cameras that give a view of the front wheels, handy when off-roading through tight spaces in an unfamiliar car.

The offloading capabilities of these machines never ceases to amaze me. This particular day was a wintery, cold, damp day in January and the D5 handled the course with ease.  No muddy track seemed to make it work too hard.  With a huge 900mm wading depth, a 200mm improvement over the D3’s 700mm, the D5 also took deep water in its stride (although ours didn’t come fitted, wading sensors with an on-screen display are an optional extra).  Steep slopes and 29 degree angles were also handled well.

In summary I thoroughly enjoyed another fantastic day with the Eastnor Land Rover experience team.  The instructors certainly know their stuff – credit to Swany, who stayed with us the whole day – providing guidance and advice calmly and with as much technical detail as you can take. (With two engineers in the car, he got bombarded with a lot of technical questions!).  Combined with the breathtaking views and the amazing grounds of Easton Castle, I can’t imagine a better off roading experience.  I’m already trying to figure out how to get involved in a local 4×4 club to use my D3 for what it was designed to do, and get out there for more!

Where else in the UK can you book off road driving experience days?

I’ve had lots of people comment via social media that they are disappointed they live too far from Land Rover Experience Eastnor, Herefordshire to book this 4×4 driving experience so I’ve listed below the other eight Land Rover off road driving centres in the UK. Hope it helps.

Land Rover Experience Scotland (Perthshire), Land Rover Experience Yorkshire (Skipton), Land Rover Experience Liverpool, Land Rover Experience Cheshire (Tarporley), Land Rover Experience Solihull, Land Rover Experience East of England (Market Harborough), Land Rover Experience London (Bedfordshire), Land Rover Experience West Country (Devon).

Disclosure – We were invited to review Land Rover Experience Eastnor. All thoughts and opinions are, as always, our own.