Set up by Valéry Leblond, a qualified mountain guide, this agency specialises in organising seminar and team building events. It is based close to the TGV station in Valence and has made the Vercors its “playground” of choice. Specialising in team building activities, its two main areas of expertise are night-time orienteering courses on the Vercors plateau and “via corda” in the Choranche area.
Valéry Leblond is a former Airbus Industrie and Thalès engineer who also happens to be a qualified mountain guide. In 2006 he established the Montagnes et Compagnie agency, which is located in the Drôme and specialises in corporate seminar business. The Vercors plateau is his “playground” of choice.
Based at Clérieux, just 8 km from the TGV station in Valence, the agency organises ready-made seminars that include transport, accommodation and venue hire as well as team building activities that take place largely in the great outdoors.
Valéry Leblond works with a team of three other people, two of whom have the same professional background as him. “It’s a definite advantage, because we’ve experienced corporate life,” he explains. “During our second year of business, we organised about 15 seminars for between ten and 70 people, mostly for companies working in the transport and environmental sectors from Lyon, Paris or Grenoble. We tend to work on seminars lasting three days and two nights”.
Having been a mountain guide in the Aravis area, Valéry Leblond also extends his business to that destination, working in La Clusaz with the Hôtel Beauregard and in Le Grand-Bornand with the Auberge Nordique. However, most of the events he works on are based at the Hôtel du Col de la Machine above Saint-Jean-en-Royans, Les Vieilles Granges in Granges-lès-Beaumont, both of which are members of the Drôme network “Séminaires de Caractère”, or the Éterlou holiday centre at Plan de Baix.
“Our sessions are based on team work where everyone plays a specific role,” continues Valéry Leblond. “During our night-time orienteering courses, each team member has to find his or her specific markers as shown on an IGN map. This develops a stronger team spirit, encouraging discussion and collaboration between the participants. And once people have lived through such a challenging experience, they tend to see their colleagues in a completely different light”.
Other activities offered by Montagnes et Compagnie include biathlon, mountain biking, kayaking on the river Drôme, emergency rescue exercises when teams have to make stretchers to evacuate their “wounded” comrade and also “via corda” close to Choranche.
The latter is supervised by a high mountain guide who works for the agency. “The trail ends with a 40 m drop to abseil down,” warns the founder of Montagnes et Compagnie. “It really does require participants to exceed their own limits… and it’s wonderful to see the broad smiles at the bottom, when people realise that they’ve conquered their fears. The aim is to prove to them that they are capable of doing better than they could ever have imagined possible and I guess that means we’re catalysts in the very chemical sense of the word…”
So does this appeal to you ? For information, the seminar rate for two days and one night at the Hôtel du Col de la Machine, including night-time orienteering, costs between 150 and 200 € whilst three days and two nights, including “via corda”, costs about 300 € per person.
Montagnes et Compagnie, in Clérieux (Drôme)
Tel.: 00 33 (0)4 75 71 20 89
