Complete Cruise Solution Sales Meeting (or how to sleep with most of your colleagues!)

Army Tanks? Quad Biking? The Mr Bean Style Minis?
Could these be the new CCS Company Vehicles?


Tuesday 25th September
10pm
It's the eve of the Complete Cruise Solution quarterly sales meeting. Everyone's a bit nervous as we are heading to a "secret location" which has been the subject of fevered speculation. As we are scheduled to celebrate our recent Travel Company of the Year Award win at the TTG awards, anticipation is high that the "secret location" will involve lots of champagne and a couple of days living in the lap of luxury. No-one knows what to pack (though rather ominously we have been told to bring clothes for cold weather; needless to say hair straighteners are "strictly verboten").
Picture: Lee Barker, Paul Ludlow,

Wednesday 26th September
7am
The 65 people in the sales team meet at our offices in Southampton for an early start. We all try to bribe the coach driver to tell us where we're off to, but he is under strict instructions to keep schtum. We've been told to bring our passports and a rumour goes round that we are being taken straight to Southampton airport to fly to Paris (seems unlikely, but France is the home of Champagne after all!)

730am
Bad news. We've driven past Southampton airport without stopping. Seems like Paris isn't going to happen. We are now heading west. No-one's in the mood for a sing-song. We get the driver to turn up the heat in the coach - it might be the last time that we feel warm for a while.

1030am
We've just arrived at a farm 10 miles south of Bristol. Our overnight accommodation is a group of tee-pees that sleep up to sixteen people. Apparently tonight is going to be the coldest night of the autumn so far and there is a big gaping hole at the top of the tent. There aren't any mattresses - we've each been allocated a super-thin rug to sleep on (more a bath-mat than a bed). The toilet facilities aren't great - all 65 of us are sharing one toilet and one shower.


4pm
The "conference" part of the sales meeting is over. We spend the afternoon on a treasure hunt and building racing cars from scratch. Needless to say Giles is cheating to make sure that he wins. Everytime we look up the teepees are in the background - they don't look very welcoming! An emergency shower block has been towed into the car park so that there are some more washing facilities for the morning. Still only one toilet though, and we have now been advised that we should "water" the fields in the night if there is a queue for the loos.

11pm
We celebrate our TTG award with a toast to our agent partners at the start of our hog roast dinner and then get stuck into the pub quiz, with the usual suspects cheating by texting their friends to get them to google the answers. After the evening entertainment we go back to the teepee field. The temperature has dropped to three degrees. Someone has been to the local off license to make sure there is plenty of booze to keep us warm and to continue the celebrations. At midnight we wake up the farmer and get him to build us a bonfire so that we can toast our marshmallows. At 1am we wake up the farmer again to get him to carry out some emergency repairs to one of the teepees that has an alarming hole at the top. At 130am the farmer comes back and tells us that the neighbours are complaining about all the noise we are making from the sing-a-long

Thursday 27 September
2am
Most people are in "bed". We started off with two teepees for the boys and five teepees for the girls. Some of the girls have mutinied (the hole at the top of one of the teepees was too big!) and so the remaining teepees are getting crowded. The gender-segratation seems to have disappeared, with two of the remaining three girls' teepees hosting some of the male colleagues for the night.

4am
Still awake. The farmer told us that once we were in our teepees and tucked up in our sleeping bags we would feel very snug and warm. I am still waiting for this to happen. Someone is snoring in another teepee so loudly that it sounds like they are right next to me. Someone is still singing by the camp fire.



430am
The last members of the sales team finally go to bed.

630am
The night is over. A queue is forming for the showers, but the logistical challenge of getting wet is too great. We head for breakfast. Some of the girls are struggling without hair straighteners - apparently wearing a hat is the best substitute to hide non-straightened hair!

830am
We start the day's team building exercises. During the day we will drive a tank (surprisingly complicated to drive in a straight line, and surprisingly easy to send into a ditch); shoot clay pigeons and race Minis. We learn that Paul Beale is our speed demon (he won the Mini racing); that Zoe Scott is a surprising good shot in the clay pigeon shooting challenge with a clear 10 out of 10 in the first round; that Gemma Robbins would have a fantastic career as a tank driver if she wanted to be in the army; and that the best team (ie my team!) won the team event!

Picture: Giles Hawke, Stacey Richards, Gemma Robbins, Katie Brickell, Nathanial Sherborne & Paul Beale

Thank you to TTG for awarding Carnival UK Travel Company of the Year for the second year running, and giving the sales team an opportunity to celebrate our success in such luxurious surroundings!

By Mark Pilkington