2009 Dates (one week):
25th May, 15th June, 20th September, 19th October.
This one week in the Picos Mountains is enough to refocus and thoroughly rejuvenate your life. On The Big Stretch you explore your career, your relationships and your passions. You walk vast mountain
scape in Spain, staying in extreme comfort high in the meadows. You sense your priorities, think creatively, and map out an inspiring path forwards that fully expresses who you are.
First, you fill your lungs with clear air, your body with good food and your mind with fresh perspectives. Second, you have a week's structured coaching that's entirely focused on you. You'll have creative guidance to unblock and support to successfully address unhelpful patterns. You have space and time to clarify your next moves in whatever area's most important to you. Imagine the calm excitement of knowing how you'll create your next defining shift.
Anyone who goes skiing or walking knows how wide horizons can uplift and clear an overstretched mind. Psychologically, being active helps with breakthrough thinking: the brain slips into alpha state, the subconscious incubates promising ideas, and resolves the unresolved. Up and away in nature after the coaching sessions, for three years rational intelligent people have been accessing their whole brain on The Big Stretch, rediscovering their powers of intuition and getting insights which elude them in ordinary life.
The Big Stretch. Remember when you've been on holiday or out in the wilds - you come back fresh, clear, and full of energy for making positive change. Now imagine that focus and inspiration lasting more than a couple of days. The Big Stretch is a new form of break: an active holiday in Spain's most unspoiled, dramatic mountains, combined with creative coaching.
The Big Stretch is a space to step back, expand your outlook and plan productively for yourself. A week that's energetic by day, and luxurious by night, it brings together the power of nature, creative thinking and life coaching so that you return home fitter, confident of your future direction, and armed with a plan of action that's inspiring and authentic to you.
For seven days we take you walking in Spain's verdant Picos Mountains. Away from the everyday, stretching your body and scanning huge vistas, your outlook starts to expand of its own accord. Then we turn up the volume: for the first 2 hours of each day, high caliber coaches guide you towards fresh perspectives and an honest focus on what you want. The week's framework - with unlimited access to two dedicated coaches and scheduled individual coaching - ensures you channel your creativity and make meaningful ambitions real.
The Big Stretch is an active holiday in comfort. Our philosophy is maximum landscape for your efforts: we transport you to and from the very best points on the trails and you’re always led by a knowledgeable local guide. Outdoors for full-length days, you pass through meadows, forests, peaks, gorges enjoying the landscapes from varying levels and walking through fantastically varied terrains. There's no time pressure on our walks.
This holiday is for people who enjoy exercise and can imagine the buzz of a week's physical stretch. Basic fitness and an energetic attitude are all you need. The Big Stretch seems to attract spirited, intelligent characters from diverse backgrounds. Previous groups have included film-makers, doctors, company directors, marketeers, writers, social entrepreneurs, mothers re-entering the working world, professionals approaching retirement. Most are 35-55.
Our maximum group is 8. Friends who come together are treated as individuals. We suggest couples travel on separate weeks.
Picos de Europa, Spain. Close to Bilbao, the craggy limestone peaks of the Picos de Europa rise sheer out of lush green valleys. The mountains are carved into three distinct ranges by clear rivers. The life you find there is surprisingly simple - wobbly old stone architecture in the hamlets, people cutting hay and making cheeses by hand.
In one day's walk you can drop down from crocus-covered meadows, past an isolated village, and then down a steep, dramatic gorge. Another day you can canoe downstream from mountains to sea without houses in sight. Although within just 2 hours of UK, the region is a culturally unspoiled pocket of Spain. Since you fly to Bilbao, many people add a few cosmopolitan days to their trip and visit the Guggenheim.
Designed for people who are busy achievers, the Big Stretch combines powerful disciplines to make best use of your week away. Your two coaches support you through a fast-paced sequence of explorations which stir up fresh information on your situation, to mull (or ignore) as you walk. Whether you're contemplating more meaningful work, a new initiative or simply know that change is afoot, this week challenges you to step out of ruts and towards your higher ambitions.
You can walk and talk on the mountain trail: the coaches, experienced in catalyzing intelligent people, ask paradigm-shifting questions, act as sounding boards and nudge you past sticking points to a simple, strong vision of what you will achieve. We teach you proven ways to think more laterally, to turn inspirations into concrete ideas. Towards the end of the week, The Big Stretch thinking gets practical. You form concrete plans for reality - foundations for lasting confidence and actual change.
Life coaching addresses the whole balance of your life - across career, relationships, health, personal growth, money, play - with a firm emphasis on pro actively shaping the future. It helps you work out what values you want to live by, and to get moving effectively towards whatever fulfills you now. Currently most life coaching is by long-term commitment - weekly sessions over a period of months. The Big Stretch brings unusual distance and creativity to your big questions, and works in a more condensed format.
Anyone who goes skiing or walking knows how outdoor activities can uplift and clear an overstretched mind. While you're happily concentrating on being vigorous, the brain slips into alpha state and your subconscious starts to sort disparate thoughts. Immersion in wild landscape meanwhile, further opens your senses, bringing a sense of connectedness, and triggering moments of intuition. Effortlessly, you resolve the unresolved. If you've ever had a flash of understanding in nature, you'll know what we mean.
At The Big Stretch we have also noticed that natural environments provide fertile stimulus for new ideas. As you experiment with mental photographs, incubation and other non-verbal creative skills, it might be a condor, a rock-form, or paddling with the flow in a river that presents the analogy for how you could manage relationships differently or overcome a persistent obstacle.
In case you think this sounds hippy dippy, it's not. Our coaches regularly facilitate future thinking at board level with global organizations and with government. The Big Stretch has evolved from innovative techniques that we practice in the business world. Here, it's adapted to individuals and peppered with tricks to help you draw on nature as a source of inspiration. Neither therapy nor belief system, The Big Stretch only sharpens your individual sense of purpose in life.
The Big Stretch Founder and Coaches. The Big Stretch was devised by Rosie Walford in collaboration with leading creativity teachers, facilitators, and coaches who work with senior managers worldwide. The Big Stretch is a new fusion of approaches that have been tried and tested in many contexts. Each week is unique.
Rosie is a psychologist by training, with an MA in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University. She specialized in strategic planning at J Walter Thompson and Leo Burnett, (international ad agencies), rising to board level. She trained in creative problem-solving and creative leadership at the Creative Education Foundation, State University of New York and in group facilitation directly with one of the founding fathers of the field.
She teaches worldwide and has coached individuals in UK, Canada, India and New Zealand. She is called in to help companies define and resolve big questions (BBC, Body Shop, Comic Relief, Safeway), generate creative ideas or shape their future direction: (GlaxoSmithKline, New Covent Garden, Random House).
She has led a Raleigh International expedition of 12 people and 24 horses in the glacial Chilean Andes, and ran workshops at The Big Chill. She’s recently published a book, Shelf Life, with Bloomsbury publishing; her frame of reference is wide. Rosie is the lead coach, working each week with a pool of senior coach-facilitators who bring complementary skills. At the top of their fields, they all charge between £1000 and £3000 a day.
Accommodation and Food: We’ve chosen locally owned hotels for their uncompromisable quality and deeply peaceful locations. You’ll have a huge comfortable room, a first-rate bathroom and uninterrupted views. Delicious picnic lunches are provided on the mountains. We’ve tried every brewery in the mountains and every eatery in the fishing ports, so, by night you eat only at atmospheric and authentic restaurants serving really good food. Wherever the group chooses to go, these meals out are covered by The Big Stretch.
The Big Stretch may offer a small bursary if you use it to mobilize an initiative or enterprise with positive environmental or social impact. The Big Stretch also organizes bespoke breakthrough retreats for Boards and senior working teams to reach clarity and alignment when they want to create positive change.Keep on Stretching: A package of six one-hour coaching sessions after The Big Stretch costs £700. You can subscribe at the time that you book.
Tour Itinerary:
Day 1: Arrive. Your guide will be at the airport of Bilbao to welcome you. After a short lunch stop you drive a couple of hours to your main hotel which stands beneath a rocky summit, amongst meadows and eucalyptus trees. All you hear is cowbells and birds. Before dinner in the hotel we run through plans for the week.
Day 2: Coast-mountain views. After breakfast and your first creative exploration, you walk to the top of Mt Hibeo, in the coastal mountain range. The path winds upwards to a saddle from where you have views directly down onto the coast on one side and up to the central range of mountains on the other - then on up to the summit.
Day 3: Gorge walking. The most famous walk in the Picos, probably Spain, is along the Cares gorge. From a dramatic entry into the curving gorge, the trail starts to merge with the cliff wall until you are walking on a path no more than 10 feet across, 1,000 feet above a transparent river. Today's coaching looks into your wishes and ambitions, exploring your sense of purpose in the wider world. You pinpoint areas where you’re most motivated to achieve something new.
Day 4: Free walking. Opposite the hotel lies the magic mountain, inspiration for the book by Thomas Mann. Below it, paths meander through wild flowers towards the sea. You are free to explore and muse in your own time, whilst each person has scheduled one to one coaching. Together you find the most compelling and thorny issue for creative attack.
Day 5: Canoe. Today you enjoy canoing down a broad river to the sea, picnicking on a sandbank midway (a great opportunity to observe your patterns of behavior around new challenges). Whilst exercising your capacity to generate new solutions, we teach you playful, productive lateral thinking skills.
Day 6: High peaks. You scale the open meadows at the foot of the sheer rocky Naranjo de Bulnes. Below is a rare village disconnected from the world by any road. Mentally, you'll be equally action-oriented, preparing your plan of what you'll do, by when, at home (including something to kick start your momentum in the first 24hours back).
Day 7: Beaches. Today you explore the cliffs and drop down onto deserted sandy beaches where you can swim through natural stone arches and caves. Move to your new hotel, a 17th century conversion close to Bilbao before the final session of the week. Celebrate and relax!
Day 8: Home. Return to Bilbao for flight home.
Notes:
Airfare is not included in the tour price.
Price Includes:
- All coaching, unlimited attention of 2 leading coaches, guiding
- Transfers
- Excursions, canoe hire
- Single en-suite room with jacuzzi
- All meals.
It does not include flights, tips or drinks.
Also see tour packages in:
Europe
Spain
Outdoor: Land Rambler
Hiking & Trekking
Ecotourism
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