Review - Independant review of our Paintball Site

The Berkshire Paintball Site Review
The Great Haze Wood is located just outside Maidenhead town, west of London. It is one of the 6 paintball sites, all run by National Paintball Games (NPG) network. The Great Haze Wood site, which I visited, has bed opened since 1999 and by now is well known in the entire South of England.

I arrived at 9 am and was warmly welcomed by the site manager John Millsy, a friendly and lively man, and by his staff (two young girls). Soon a group of men arrived, which I later found out, were all work colleagues from a building site.

While unpacking, the manager offered us all free tea and coffee, which tasted incredibly good on such a cold morning.

Group of men were given camouflage overalls, which later protected their own clothes from colour stains, full face and head protection helmets, paintballs and battle pack webbing, for carrying ammo.

The atmosphere was really good, men were planing cunning strategies against each other, while loading “bullets” with great excitement. When ready, the manager and one of his staff (both trained marshals supervising the games) asked us to come through to a “danger zone”, where a short safety talk was given and test firing held the place. Now the game was ready to begin.

Players were divided into 2 teams, and to win they had to capture the “enemies flag”. Each game lasted minimum 25 minutes…and between each game a short break was allowed for a snack or a free hot drink.

The Great Haze Wood site (alike other 5 sites) has 8 different fields, all aimed for different strategies and experiences. The players can normally choose the fields they prefer the most.

- 2 Wooldlands- and –Bridge- are fields, closest to a wild forest (with trees barricades, bridges, bunkers, pits… )

-Maize- is a field made up of different colour netting’s stretched between the trees, forming different routes and shelters.

-Village- is a field with wooden huts built all over, reminding an empty village.

-Fort- is a field with a wooden castle-like built in the middle, which one team defends, while the other team tries to conquer.

-Tyre- field consists of a load of old tyres.

-Sup-air- consists of big inflatable objects.

Most of the day I followed the builder’s games. They tried all of the fields, enjoying most the –village-. In between the games, we were offered a free lunch (hot dog). There is also a drinks machine and a selection of snacks and chocolates.

The builders were playing on this site for the first time, therefore their games were always supervised by a marshal. I noticed that during the day a lot of different groups and individuals came. They registered, and if one of the staff knew them as “regulars”, they were allowed to play their games unsupervised, choosing the rules and sites that suited them the most, using their own gear (or gear supplied by the site).

The Great haze Wood site has a very flexible time table, letting the players to choose amount and length of games played during the day.

They will soon be opening a shop selling paintball equipment, clothing and accessories.

At this site some survival courses are available, run by 2 ex-SAS soldiers.

I would recommend this paintball site to anyone interested in this game…. as the attitude from the staff was very positive, marshals were very encouraging and helpful, and the whole site was well looked after, organised, and tidy.