Carden Park Client Trip
On Friday 20th March we had the great pleasure of hosting a special client trip to the beautiful Carden Park Hotel, Cheshire. We began the evening with a drinks reception in the newly refurbished Library area of the Morgan’s bar - we were fortunate to have the last 3 remaining bottles of the vintage 'Carden Old Gold' sparkling wine which is produced using Carden's very own grapes from their onsite 3 acre vineyard!
Once welcomes and introductions had been made between our lovely clients and their guests we made our way through the hotel to see the selection of meeting rooms available, including the huge Carden suite which was set up for 350 guests for a gala dinner with the pretty starlit ceiling, the Shooting suite (which is one of my personal favourite rooms) and an example breakout - it's great at Carden because all of the rooms are located very close to each other but still self contained if you're only using one or two of them.
We then sat down for dinner in the Prince of Wales suite where we enjoyed a delicious three course meal - Paupiette of lemon sole filled with a lobster mousseline with wilted spinach, saffron potatoes and a dill scented hollandaise sauce to start, chargrilled beef fillet and sticky braised beef with a caramelised onion rosti, tender stem broccoli and a wild mushroom and truffle tortellini (it was as good as it sounds!) followed by a chilled chocolate fondant with an orange and Cointreau liquid centre – it’s fair to say after dinner and quite a few glasses of wine we were all very full but still managed to find room for another glass or two in the Morgan’s bar!
On Saturday morning some of our early bird clients made use of the extensive leisure facilities and swam before breakfast! The rest of us enjoyed a lie in before all joining for a full English breakfast in the Redmond’s restaurant. After breakfast we were then met by Phil from the Event Station (Carden’s very own onsite team building & activity company) who taught us how to Segway – I’ve never personally been on a Segway before so was surprised at how easy it is to stand on & move and not so much about balancing. Once we’d had a few practice laps of the course we then split into teams and raced each other which was great fun! We then made our way round to the new archery setup which is hidden just behind the car park in the woodland area so feels very secluded even though it’s just a couple of minutes walk from the hotel entrance. Archery was again surprisingly easy to pick up and caused more laughs and jokes as we continued the team battles! Once the winners had been announced we then had a walk down to the Kong Ropes Course which is a large high ropes course with various heights and challenges including a 250m zip wire for those brave enough! Event Station have a number of other activities available on site at Carden and will be hosting 4x4 driving experiences over their purpose built off-road course within the estate grounds, so it’s perfect for corporate away days or team building.
Our clients said they were surprised at how much is available onsite, they were all aware of the hotel and two golf courses but didn’t appreciate the wow factor from the long private drive up, the amount of activities onsite and even the size of the meeting rooms! Overall everyone had a great time and we are looking forward to bringing new groups & events here.
