Bonjour!
You may have noticed that on Friday 7th August 2015, the Elman Wall, Cavendish Ware and Summit Advisory teams were away from the office for our Summer outing… to lovely Lille!
Day 1
We met bright and early at St. Pancras station for 7am and set off on the 8:06am train. Despite the early start, all were in great spirits and excited about the days ahead. We arrived in Lille at 10:30am local time and made the short walk to our hotel, very impressed by how accessible it all was!
After checking into our rooms at the Grand Hotel Belluvue we all had over 3.5 hours to explore the striking surroundings of this archaic town in c26 degree heat. This meant plenty of sightseeing, shopping, food and drinks!
Ann-Marie sitting by the Column of the Goddess, in the centre of Grand Place and Zsuzs tucking into a cheese fondue. Mmmm.
Having explored this attractive old town with its strong Flemish influence until 2:15, it was time to make our way back to the hotel for an afternoon of presentations and general team bonding.
All departments of the EW Group gave presentations outlining ‘What’ we do, ‘Why’ we do it and ‘How’ we do it which was very beneficial in helping us understand one another better and have more of a seamless interaction between departments. Presentations were given from the Tax Team, the A-Team (Audit Team), the Management Accounts team (recently rebranded as the BOSS team for Buiness OutSourcing Solutions), the Marvellous Marketing team, as well as a presentation from Yasin on the Travel Industry. Cavendish Ware and Summit Advisory also shared their strategy, achievements and future goals, all before the Q&A session with Jonathan and Adrian ‘in the chair’ and being interviewed by EWHR, Claire Steiner.
Left to right: Jonathan Wall – MD Elman Wall, Adrian Ware – CEO Cavendish Ware and Claire Steiner – EWHR)
With only an hour to get ready for pre-dinner drinks (yes, it’s a female writing this!), it was time to ‘glam up’ and hit Lille by night. After drinks in the courtyard of a beautiful French bar called Le Market, off we went for dinner at the Restaurant Compostelle where we had the top floor reserved.
Most people then went out and explored the local pubs, bars, and clubs where we laughed the evening away showcasing some of the best of Elman Wall’s flawless dance moves.
Day 2
The next morning, despite energy levels not being quite as high as they were on the night out, a team building morning prepared us all for what was to come next… go karting!
Competitive tension is healthy so for this exercise we split up into teams of 3 and compared our best lap times. The winners for the day were team Lucy and Reuben (yep, just the 2 of them) and seeing as we were doing this all in another batch of c26 degree heat, that was pretty impressive!
We were all ‘very happy’ that Lucy and Reuben were the winners, and ‘didn’t mind at all’ that we didn’t win…
The Elman Wall, Cavendish Ware and Summit Advisory happy families
Finally, it was time to head home on the Eurostar with a very capable, passionate and valued team, most of whom contemplated our lovely Summer away day(s) …. By indulging in a much needed nap!
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