Not a tour.
Not a retreat.
A structured passage.
Ultreia is built around a small-group pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, with individual coaching and a curriculum designed to make sure what happens on the walk actually takes root when you get home.
What a day with Ultreia actually looks like
There is structure, and there is space. The structure is intentional. The space is essential. You begin each morning on the Camino with a single word or sentence in your journal – an intention, not an agenda. Then you walk.
Rob walks with you, available for conversation but equally comfortable in silence. Something about moving through the landscape together, without eye contact or agenda, lowers the defenses that years of professional performance have built. You may say things on Day 3 that you have never said out loud. Not because Rob asked the right question, but because the Camino created the conditions and Rob knew how to hold them.
Each day you carry one walking question, drafted specifically for you before the journey begins. Not a group exercise. A question drawn from your history, your threshold, and what you most need to reckon with. You carry it the way you carry a stone in your pocket. You do not try to answer it. You let it work on you over each kilometer.
After dinner, the group is invited to gather. Rob opens a question and holds what follows: a small circle of people at the same threshold, done performing, telling the truth.
BEFORE THE WALK
Two individual coaching sessions over 6-8 weeks. We name what you are carrying, surface the question underneath the question, and prepare you to walk with intention. You receive your personalized guided journal and your walking questions – nine questions drafted specifically for you.
How It Works
The Ultreia experience runs before, during, and after the walk. That last part matters most. People come home from the Camino full of resolve and lose it inside a month, back in the same house, the same inbox, the same conversations. The work is making it survive contact with your ordinary life.
THE WALK
Eight days on the Camino de Santiago, Ponte de Lima to Santiago. A small group of up to 8 people, all at similar thresholds. A daily rhythm of walking, reflection, and honest conversation. Rob with you every step.
AFTER THE WALK
Two individual integration sessions over 8-10 weeks. We translate what happened on the walk into something livable. We map what comes next. And at two months, a letter you wrote to your future self before you walked arrives in your mailbox.
A Map for the Passage
Ultreia’s curriculum is built around a five-phase framework developed from the best thinking on adult transition, mapped onto the arc of the pilgrimage itself.
1. What Was
Naming and honoring the identity that is ending, not just the title, but the self you built around it.
2. The Call
Hearing what is calling. Separating what you’re relieved to leave from what you’re genuinely longing for.
3. The Walk
Physical challenge, enforced slowness, unexpected conversation. The road teaches what the office cannot.
4. The Clearing
The moment something loosens. A conviction forms. A question dissolves. This is what the walk is for.
5. Coming Home
Coming home changed and the harder work of staying changed. This is where most programs end and Ultreia’s post-journey sessions begin.
What you can expect to take away
1
Clarity about what you are carrying – naming what you are actually leaving behind, uncertain about, or longing for.
3
A different relationship with your own inner life – more practiced at paying attention to what you actually think and feel.
5
The beginning of a map for what comes next – a named direction and one or two concrete commitments.
2
At least one question worth pursuing – not an answer, but a question alive enough to carry into the next chapter.
4
A community of people who know who you actually are – not who your institution said you were.
6
A story that marks a before and after – you crossed a bridge from Portugal to Spain, you walked to Santiago, something shifted.
The inaugural Ultreia pilgrimage:
October 1, 2027
The inaugural Ultreia pilgrimage begins October 1, 2027. A small number of spaces are available. You do not need to be ready to commit to express interest. Questions about cost, lodging, or fitness? They're answered here.