Last year my company wanted to do a team building event. Luckily the bosses cycle (roadies) so we were able to persuade them to run a bike ride from London to an office in Holland – 300 miles in 3 days.
It was a novel challenge to do once, and pleased I managed to do it on an MTB but I dont think I want to spend that time doing it again and I think the event cost more than they thought. (10 participants – one hired van, one car + drivers)
So I am looking for suggestions for another event preferably MTB based.

At one end of the scale one boss is looking to do Lejog
Pros: proper challenge with some bragging rights
Cons: Lots of time off work and away from family, I would have to buy a road bike.

On the other end of the scale is London to Brighton offroad. (back on the train)
Pros: only takes a day therefore cheap and inclusive
Cons: only takes a day

Suggestions?
(bearing in mind West London start point)

Ride the olympic road race route

Ride the olympic road race route and distance

on boris bikes….

Cons: Lots of time off work and away from family, I would have to buy a road bike.

Away from family I can understand as a “con” (although a few days without kids can be bliss!), but the rest? Does not compute.

Strathpuffer. That’ll make or break your team I reckon.

Cons ,its with people from work

A week off work with people from work. Does not compute

M25-like MTB orbital of London. Take more than one day, but not too far from home/office. Not sure if it has been done before.
[Balmoral to ]Sandringham to Buckingham Palace to Windsor for the jubilee year.

Do the Tour of Flanders.

The roady types can do the roadie one, choosing from 3 distances, the mountain bikers can do the mountain bike route, 2 (?) distances, then all have many beers and steak and frites, then get up the day after and watch the pro race.

Yorkshire team building:

Get them in a room – tell them FIFO

No, not ‘First In, First Out’, but

‘Fit In or F*** Off’

Job’s a good un.

Not cycling but we did a cookschool team build, great fun (if you like the people you work with) and it did work well as a team build.

A week off work with people from work. Does not compute

Hoping it doesn’t compute as part of the OP’s holiday allowance 🙂

I’d be quite happy to head off for a few days with most of the people I work with, never had any problems on business trips for example – pizza, a couple of beers and a bit of IT geek shop talk isn’t that bad a way to spend an evening or two.

How about doing one of the two Questars Q2 events? Outdoors, mix of disciplines (trail running, mtb and kayaking), really well run and great fun. There’s one in April and one in October. They also do one day events through the year. Not very expensive either. Did the October one last year and not only was the weather stonkingly awesome (yes, it was THAT weekend) it was superb fun.

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The October one

If you wanted to spend a whole lot more money and do a lot more training then you could also try the Intelligent Sport UK Challenge. Note that this is a lot more money! Having said that it is still a pretty unique event and great fun. On their good years there is a huge sense of achievement when you finish.

UK challenge

Thanks all for suggestions so far

Its true that with a 3 month old kid at the time I was the only one in the group who felt better as the days went on as I was getting so much un-interupted sleep 🙂

Also too much time with work colleagues a fair point, some are a good laugh, I was riding in Peaslake with a couple of them yesterday – BUT…

Olympic road course could work but is a little too normal will have a look at the tour of flanders.

Cheers

This is huge fun, we enter four teams a year (HP)

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