Annual Company "French Trip" (hummmm..)

Okay so now that we are part of a large multinational engineering company on Friday 8th August 2006, the company (the original smaller one) went on a "Team building day out" to France and Brugge (Belgium) - via coach and ferry. The fact that we spent an hour our two in a LARGE french supermarket and filled our coach with wines, beers, spirits, cheese and meats gave an indication of the true motivation for the trip - It was a good old BOOZE CRUISE!!!

The trip started off at some godforsaken hour of 4am, a quick ferry ride over to Calais and then we hit the supermarket. After successfully buying a selection of wines and some stinky cheese I finally boarded the coach (much to the annoyance of everyone as I was the last one on - 30 minutes late!!!). Then we set off to get the hell out of france and into the country of beer and chocolate - Belgium. The rest of the afternoon was occupied by a fabulous meal (on the company) at a resturant in the older (and better) section of Brugge.

Post meal we hit off looking for good beers... unfortunately I was the tour guide and was trying to find a perticular belgium pub 't Brugs Beertje. After standing around in the rain a bit I put a call through to Aussie Steve back at work in London (poor bastard) and got some directions. After getting the correct street (Kemelstraat) we were there in no-time and put about tasting 9 and 10% beers :)

Then it was time to get back in time for the coach trip back, making sure we weren't late becuse otherwise they would leave us.... haha... ya sure, whatever! OR SO WE THOUGH.... Actually one of our guys who made it all the way back to the coach pickup point managed to get himself lost (he was completely smashed) and then managed to get himself LEFT IN BELGIUM!!! Apparently our couach drivers couldn't - much to the anger from his drinking partners in crime at the rear of the coach - but he managed to make it back to the UK, the next day! The coach trip was as it always is after one of these "Team building" events... a complete and utter boozed mess!

Made it safely back to the office and managed to break one of my expensive bottles of red - DAMN! Then home and SLEEP!

Check out the other photos