AquaQ on the Move – A Step-by-Step Retelling

Following our blog last Friday surrounding our tribute to the Great British Bake Off; we continue our 2021 social retrospective this week with a two for one blog containing all events walking.

The Big Group Walk of July

All the way back in July, an opportunity arose for a lot of the newer employees to meet others in the company face-to-face for the first time. A group 7 mile walk was organised to navigate the coastal route from Holywood Banks to Crawfordsburn. The walk provided a much needed escape from the inside walls of the house, all the while walking along a beautiful route with wonderful people.

The walk concluded with a wide array of snacks, sandwiches and refreshments, and also some friendly competition in the form of a game of football among other things.

The Walking Challenge of October

For the avid followers of the AquaQ Analytics blog – you may remember a 2020 event, where, as a company, we virtually walked from our New York office to our Hong Kong office in order to celebrate its opening. Another year, another office – the recent opening of our Derry/Londonderry office saw another opportunity for us to get out and about, and socialise with other people in the company.

The Challenge

In order to honour the new AquaQ office, we set up a new challenge in 2021 asking participants to walk the distance between our HQ Belfast office and our newly established Derry/Londonderry office (a distance of around 100 km) in just three weeks. As well as this, we inspired friendly competition between those taking part by pitting teams against each other to get the furthest distance collectively.

The challenge saw some fantastic photos being taken, creative routes, socialising in the form of group walks, “punny” team names and a whole lot of steps. On the whole – a very successful event.

The Results

We set out with the aim of 100 km per person taking part (about 4.76 km per day). As a company, we managed to exceed this target and reached on average 109 km per person. Some of the feats seen in the challenge were incredible – such as AquaQ’s very own Ultra Marathon runner Maurice Lim, travelling a whopping 299.5 km in total over the challenge and a very impressive “morning run” of 62 km on one day.

Other impressive accomplishments included;

• Felix Ellis’ creative route – an ode to the fabulous work done by AquaQ in Hong Kong:

• Stefan Hales’ amazing photograph, winning him the photography competition

• The Chafing the Dream team travelling the furthest distance as a team, covering a staggering 1570 km between the team of ten – an impressive achievement.

Well done to all who took part, it was a successful event through and through. Roll on next years challenge!