The Mountain Vision Quest
A Bold Leap into Your Next ChapterFor women navigating change, transition and new dimensions in leadership and wanting it to feel like an adventure not a struggle.
Angela Philp
You’ve led. You’ve succeeded. You’ve hit the ground running
(more times than you can count.)
But leadership is feeling isolating and something inside you whispers, “What the feck! The goalposts just moved again!”
Maybe you’re running thin on answers but still feeling like you have to give them.
Maybe you’re struggling again to negotiate your worth and the value you bring within the projects you lead?
Maybe you thrive on excellence and up-levelling capacity—but right now, life feels a bit like you’re climbing the same mountain every day. You’ve got the boldness, the ambition, and the vision—yet somehow, you’re still wrestling to be heard, to get your needs met, and to balance supporting others without losing yourself. It’s frustrating, isn’t it?
Somehow you slip back into settling even when you’re on a growth path. You need to get real again with what you want and congruent (I’m so sick of that boldness word) in how you claim it.
Welcome
to the Mountain Vision Quest—a three-day or five-day, full-immersion experience that will stretch your limits, ignite your spirit, and ground your vision in the wild, breathtaking beauty of the mountains..
“With the wild nature as ally and teacher we see not through two eyes but through the many eyes of intuition. With intuition we are like the starry night, we gaze at the world through a thousand eyes. The wild woman is fluent in the language of dreams, images, passion, and poetry.”
Unstoppable Through Uncertain Times
The Secret War: Escape lines WW2
The Fittko route Pyrenees Escape
France to Spain
This journey combines immersive history, guided trekking and leadership reflection inspired by the extraordinary women who organised and took part in these WW2 escape networks.
Leadership Expedition: The Women Who Led the Escape.
With Angela Philp, Women’s resilience and leadership coach
and Anne Arran Mountain Guide.
Walk the escape routes—Immerse yourself in their decisions.
Lead—with their courage & creativity.
We trek across the Pyrenees along the same paths used by Lisa Fittko (link opens in a new browser window) and fellow resistance guides, retracing the route that carried refugees, artists, and political dissidents to freedom.
But this is more than
a journey through mountains.
It’s a journey into:
- Decision-making under pressure
- Leadership without authority
- Trust in high-risk environments
- Creative resilience in uncertainty
Each day blends guided trekking, storytelling, and leadership reflection, grounded in real events that shaped the outcome of thousands of lives.
The Story Behind the Trail
In 1940–41, as Europe fell under Nazi control, small, loosely connected networks achieved the impossible. Working with the Emergency Rescue Committee, local officials, and Varian Fry network, they created lifelines where none existed. These were not formal leaders. They had no playbook and no certainty of success. Yet their actions helped save thousands.
Lisa and Hans Fittko helped hundreds of refugees over the Pyrenees to Spain and onto Barcelona, Madrid, Badajoz and Lisbon.
Lisa guided refugees across remote mountain passes under constant threat.
Varian Fry orchestrated escape routes from Marseille. and Mary Jayne Gold, funded operations, securing safe houses, and enabling movement
(All links open in a new browser window)
Why This Matters Today
Before the systems of MI9 and the Special Operations Executive scaled escape and evasion operations, these women were already:
Operating in ambiguity.
Building trust networks from scratch.
Making critical decisions with incomplete information.
Leading without recognition or structure.
“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
Who This Is For:
You're not here to dabble. You're here to excel
You don’t just aspire to greatness; you deliver it.
You bring beauty, leaving everything and everyone you encounter better, richer and more alive
You're the kind of woman who commits - fully, fiercely, and without reservation.
You know that real leadership isn’t just about personal achievement - it’s about creating something bigger than yourself.
You show up unwaveringly and, push through doubt - even on the hard days.
You're building high-performing, high value-creating teams and ecosystems.
You're creating lasting impact - through the people and communities you lead.
This quest is for those who don’t settle on principle
It’s for those who had an inspiring vision that’s now hazy, undoable or needing a dust off and a new injection of vitality and freshness.
Those needing to readjust the direction and clarify just what that new horizon is.
If you’re ready to go beyond – congruently – both for yourself and the people who count on you—you’re in the right place.
Leaders navigating complexity and change.
Entrepreneurs, founders and decision-makers.
Teams seeking meaningful, shared experiences (for a bespoke team experience).
Women drawn to history, mountains, and purpose.
This is not a yoga retreat
(although… there’ll be a wee bit of stretchy stuff cos it’s good for ya!). It’s not about meditation by a pool or gentle self-reflection. This is raw, honest, and designed to challenge you. It’s about being wild, being courageous, finding congruence and finding out what else you’re made of. Who else is in there, in that skin of yours?
“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times…..For years we have been learning, practicing, been in training for…and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.”
What Makes This Different:
This is not theory. Its leadership on the trail, away from your familiar environment, shaped by the stories of women who led when failure meant capture, or worse, and success meant survival.
What would you have done differently? You’ll get a chance to find out.
This is not a typical leadership experience. It’s an immersive expedition into one of history’s most extraordinary human networks and a chance to experience (and play out) leadership where it truly mattered.
What You’ll Gain
- A different perspective on leadership under pressure
- Practical insight into network-based leadership
- Clarity on how you typically act in uncertainty
- Tools to grow your leadership
- A powerful, shared experience with a small, high-calibre group of women
UNSTOPPABLE THROUGH UNCERTAINTY
Leading Through Transition.
The world feels unpredictable right now. Given everything is interconnected, one major event, one decision, ripples out to impact the whole world.
Everything is shifting – globally, personally, internally. Maybe it’s a career change, moving to a new country, entering menopause, founding a startup after the security of a salary…
This journey will call you to up-level as well as deepen your leadership range, resilience and response capacity. We’ll look at why your instinct is to shrink back, push harder, or cling to the familiar when things get unpredictable and help you grow your emotional health, psychological resilience, and relational capacity throughout ongoing unpredictability where you still have to deliver results.
Truth is,
whatever your transition or growth path you’re undertaking, it requires courage, self awareness, the ability to make decisions and empower them in order to reach long term objectives regardless of disruption.
“If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman… have faith. There is yet time.”
Quest
Day 1 Arrivals
Meeting point: Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
Arrive between 4:30-6:30pm at Hotel.
Evening dinner 7-9pm
Lisa Fittko lived in Banyuls-sur-Mer, close to where Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin started his journey to Spain.
On this first evening we will share a delicious meal together at a wonderful local restaurant, where Anne and Angela will set the scene and present you with the first challenges, explorations and surprises.
(All website links open in a separate browser window)
Day 2 Costal Walk (5-day quest)
Walk: Port Vendres, France to Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
(10km + 231m, 4-5 hrs)
Day 2 Costal Walk (3-day quest)
Walk: Collioure, France to Banyuls-sur-Mer, France
(17km + 280m, 6-7 hrs)
In the morning, after your briefing, we will take a short shuttle from Banyuls-sur-Mer to either Port Vendres or Collioure where our walk and initial discussions begin after breakfast.
Along the coast from the Catalan fishing village of Collioure we pass under Fort Saint-Elme & make our way to Port Vendres.
From Port Vendres we head out around the coast past the Batterie Mally ruins to the Cap de Bear and back to Banyuls on the same route people took during WW2.
Theme of the day: “We must try to save each other.”
Introduction to the SOE operatives and guides, how did the roles differ and what was their purpose?
In 1940/41, Lisa and Hans Fittko led at least 300 persecuted people to Spain in this way. En route, you’ll be role playing leadership situations based in real life challenges they would have encountered, experiencing from your own perspective how they lead the people in their care to safety when it was far from sure who they could trust.
Arrive: Hotel, Banyuls-sur-Mer
(All website links open in a separate browser window)
Day 3 Cross Border Hike
Walk: Banyuls-sur-Mer, France – Puig del Mas, France – Coll de Rumpissar, Spain – Portbou, Spain
(13km + 700m, 6-7hrs)
On leaving Puig del Mas on the outskirts of Banyuls we climb up through wine groves to reach the col. We take the memorial route, visiting the castle of Querroig before descending, at times steeply to the tiny town of Portbou – the relief of arriving at safe port in Spain.
There will be unknowns for you to navigate as you transition across the invisible line between France and Spain.
A full day’s adventure – and the most challenging physically and mentally of the quest. From Portbou, escapees boarded the night train to Barcelona and others walked on. You’ll visit the Walter Benjamin Memorial with an exploration on how to ‘hold it all’.
5-day Quest: Arrive: Hotel, Portbou.
3-day Quest: Dinner, debrief & departures, Portbou.
(All website links open in a separate browser window)
Day 4 Coastal Walk
Walk: Portbou, Spain to Llançà, Spain
(10km +357m)
On reaching Spain some caught the train to Figueres and beyond and others continued on foot. We, as you can imagine, continue on foot, leaving Portbou for Llançà via the remote beaches of El Cabo de Ras
There is an opportunity to swim in the sea or tackle a tougher route leading to the monastery St Pere de Rodes.
On the refugees, in the words of the foreign minister of the time, “..they were passing through Spain as light passes through glass, leaving no trace”.
How will you lead like light passing through glass?
We finish with an evening celebration of safe passage and arrival. A delicious dinner to debrief reflections, lessons, insights and commitments for your leadership moving forward.
Arrival: Hotel, Llançà.
(All website links open in a separate browser window)
Day 5 Debrief and departures
Explore: Llançà, Spain
Enjoy a slow breakfast, swim and walk around Llança.
After a debrief of the adventure, we will provide a shuttle back to Banyuls-sur-Mer for the train to Toulouse if you aren’t travelling by car.
(All website links open in a separate browser window)
Why You Should Join:
Stop second guessing yourself. For habitually confident, committed women, the ways you shrink yourself show up in more subtle ways. When you’re leading people through uncertainty to safe ground, you have to know yourself, keep the purpose in mind, develop your agency while enrolling others in your leadership.
Stop relying on what you can’t control to make effective decisions in the moment. Embrace your leadership without needing to have it all figured out and with incomplete information. Confident leaders can still feel anxious, but they don’t let self-doubt or complexity stop them from moving forward.
Learn to trust your confidence through uncertainty without letting either one define you.
Stop making weak compromises. Balance intellect and emotion, collaboration and direction, autonomy and connection, caring for yourself and caring for others, knowing when to speak up and when to stay quiet, without resorting to weak compromises.
Are you ready
to break free from what’s expected of you and step into what’s truly possible?
Let’s go.
Join the waitlist. Limited Spaces.
Are you ready
to break free from what’s
expected of you and step into
what’s truly possible?
Let’s go.
Join the waitlist. Limited Spaces.
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