Paris, Brussels, Dubai and now Sittingbourne? BartKarts has more than 30 sites across the world but a Kent family has opened the first interactive go-karting experience in the county.

We sent reporter and Mario Kart fan Joe Crossley to test out the life-sized video game in Hooks Hole Farm, in Borden, near Sittingbourne.

When I first saw the pictures and videos on the BattleKarts website I thought it was like a real-life version of Mario Karts.

I have played my fair share of the Nintendo game and have fond memories of playing it with my sisters on a Christmas morning after we were brought a Wii console when I was about 10-years-old.

So wathching the company’s promotional video of drivers motoring around and shooting at each other using boots to zoom, I was sure it would be right up my street.

After I had battled two hours of the infamous traffic going into Sittingbourne I arrived at the former farm complex.

It is just off the A249 near the Tudor Rose pub on Chestnut Street and was easy enough to find although there was no signage outside the site telling you were in the right place.

As I pulled up to the former tractor building I couldn’t really believe that high-tech karts would be racing around in there.

But when I went up the stairs and looked over the balcony I was struck at the sheer size of the site. My eyes were drawn to the projections on the walls and on the floor which made it look like a video game.

Connected to the roof are more than 50 projectors which are key to how the games work.

I was ushered to take part in one round of the games by Carly Warner who is a franchisee of BattleKarts with her partner Paul Scriven.

She led me to one of the karts after explaining how to operate, which was as simple as a video game, with buttons to make you reverse and use a power-up on the steering wheel as well as pedals to accelerate and brake.

I jumped in the electrically charged kart which has sensors around it that slow you down if you crash into someone as well as picking up the game projections.

This bit of tech costs £16,000.

Once the other seven racers and I had clipped our seat belts in the room went completely dark except for the projections of different coloured arrows which led us to the starting line and the lights from the kart.

The lights then came back on again around the whole building, turning the barn into a video game race track.

A timer counted us down and we were off with the person who covered the most amount of laps winning the game.

Boxes were along our route which gave us either a speed boost, a rocket which we could fire at other drivers to stop them or an oil spill which would bring a racer to a halt if they went over them.

The race lasted five minute and I had no idea how I was actually doing throughout – whether this was out of ignorance or by design – because I was concentrating on avoiding oil spills and trying to collect boxes.

Once it had finished the barn went black and a large leaderboard showed where we had all finished on the back wall.

The points we earned from this game rolled over into the next activity which was Battle Snake.

This saw us collect ‘food’ for our snake to eat which saw our ‘tail’ grow behind us. But if we touched another tail or the sides of the track our tail would be lost.

After this, we then split into teams and played squares where we battled to have our coloured squares be the more numerous than the other teams.

There were other games I didn’t get to try out as one session is 15 minutes. These are ‘BattleVirus’, ‘BattlePool’ and ‘BattleFoot’.

It was a thrilling quarter of an hour and I didn’t want to get out of the kart.

There’s nothing like this in the town, and I wondered why they had chosen Sittingbourne to open.

Why not build this in Bluewater or in one of the larger cities across the country?

I quizzed Ken Brennan, who is the commercial manager in the franchise and Paul’s father-in-law, on the subject.

He is the managing director at Sherwood Electronics – a manufacturer in Nottinghamshire – and has invested in the new leisure site.

It has cost around £750,000 and has taken around three months to convert the former tractor barn.

The 64-year-old explained this was the perfect spot because it had the infrastructure in place, including enough space for the track and ceilings high enough to install the projectors on the roof.

He added that the location is perfect thanks to the now-open A249 Stockbury flyover which will make it easy to access from Maidstone.

Also, it is close to Sittingbourne which he sees is rapidly expanding meaning more people will live in the town equalling more potential customers. But he also expects people from across the county to travel to the site.

Together with other investors, they are the first people to take on the BattleKart brand in the UK. It already is located across Europe and the Middle East.

Paul and Carly, who manage the day-to-day running of the facility, and were the driving force behind the franchise coming to Kent.

The Boughton-Green residents had come across the concept on social media a few years ago and saw that the demographic was very open.

Paul, who is a floor layer by trade, said that he sees an “opportunity as there is nothing like it” not only in Kent but across the country.

He added: “When I saw that people of all demographics were taking part and not just men like a lot of petrol go-karting is I thought it was a great opportunity.

“Anyone can do it as long as you are taller than 145cm or 4’ 9.1” inches, which is the real beauty of something like this.

“I visited Belgium to visit one of the sites to see if it was for us. I was sold on it and got my father, Lee Scriven, on board as he developed the London Bridge Experience and London Tombs.

“We got other investors involved including Ken and have been working very hard and travelled to Belgium another three times to learn the skills needed to not only build the site but also run it day to day.

“It has been a learning curve for me for sure as I have had to learn a completely new skill and we were trained by BattleKart who don’t cut any corners at all.

“I am just excited for the public to come and use the site. It’s so much fun.”

Paul is already planning to add more activities at the site including an arcade which will be installed in the same barn later this year.

So after my thrilling whizz around the track and finding out more about the new site I headed home with plans already to head back as soon as possible with a bunch of mates.

The track can accommodate at most 12 people so will be perfect for our large get-togethers.

Thanks to my experience I am hoping I will be able to get one up on them and thrash them despite my track record when it comes to gaming being pretty poor.

BattleKart Sittingbourne opened to the public on Saturday, July 13.