Becoming a Retreat Centre

As previous guests will know, our property in Corwen was operated as a guest house by the previous owners. Part of what attracted us to it was the potential for it to be transformed into a retreat centre - and the journey towards that end is one we have been travelling since we arrived!

To explain, when we first took over we had little choice but to operate primarily as a guest house. It was the middle of the tourist season (not a great time to move into a hospitality business) and there was no prior history of retreats or similar. In the first year we also had maintenance and equipment issues to contend with: a condemned boiler, broken windows, dodgy parts of the roof, unwanted creaks, a couple of broken beds, and no duvets. Even the signage we inherited was uninspiring and difficult to read in low light against its dark surroundings.

By May of the following year, thank goodness, we were beginning to find our feet and our first writing retreat happened, with a small number of adventurous guests. It had taken six months to take root, but from that point onwards we knew that our vision of a retreat centre in a stunning location was distinctly possible. But it was going to take time. For starters, the cost of living crisis was hitting not only our own pockets but those of our potential guests. The tourist industry in Wales was generally suffering - owners of local holiday lets finding that their usual summer bookings were not happening - and our retreat programme was obviously in its infancy. It was tough. But we did manage to replace the decrepit and visually unengaging signs at the front of the property.

As it was, summer bookings did pick up - guests were just being more cautious with their money, and booking last-minute rather than long in advance. Sensing, correctly, that this was going to be a trend in the tourist market, the appeal of running retreats - where bookings happen earlier and financial predictions are therefore more reliable - grew exponentially. About this time the Owain Glyndwr hotel in Corwen - a recent community purchase as part of a regeneration project - began major refurbishment. It would not be long before the hotel was back in full operation, bringing a new set of bed and breakfast rooms to the local economy. The transition to retreat centre became a little more urgent.

With retreat bookings growing fast in our third year of operation, we now found ourselves operating a dual business: a roughly equal mixture of retreat centre and guest house. As part of our developing plan these two elements operated in a complementary fashion: retreat centre during the off-season and guest house in the summer season. It was initially a clear distinction and we moved to our second set of signs, proclaiming us to be a 'guest house and retreat centre'. It felt significant.

Almost at once we found ourselves thinking about ways to develop the retreat side of the business. It was, we realised, not only more reliable than tourism (which is particularly dependent on the, often erroneous, weather forecast) but also more fun. We get to meet people properly and engage with them over several days on topics which are of interest to all of us. We get to share our gardens and grounds, our lounges and library, our home. A different story from a guest house, where most people arrive early evening, keep themselves to themselves, and then leave after breakfast the next morning. Of course there are exceptions to this rule and we are very lucky to have enjoyed many wonderful guests for bed and breakfast, but it is not quite the same as on retreats.

This Easter we felt this difference most keenly. I had already begun telling people about our move from guest house to retreat centre, and a busy programme of back to back retreats was immersing us in that culture. It was tiring but delightful. Tiring because we don't get the midday break from 11am-3pm that a guest house enjoys (after housekeeping, before the next check-in), but delightful for all the reasons outlined above. And then Easter came.

Easter is traditionally the beginning of the tourist season here in Wales and we had always envisaged that school holidays would be the last part of our schedule that might move to retreat programming in preference to guest house sales. As a result, this Easter we had not scheduled any retreats over a four-week period, focusing instead on a mixture of bed and breakfast and closing for maintenance. The closures were, as they always are, wonderful: not only can we lie-in a little, but we also feel we are making things better for our guests as we tackle the little issues, and sometimes major work, that we have identified as necessary in the previous period. But the guest house days were a different matter: we both found ourselves missing the rhythm, consistency and certainty of the retreat operation. It led to the point we find ourselves at today.

In the last few weeks, since Easter, we have been supercharging our move to a full time retreat centre. Becoming a retreat centre has been our goal for a long time now, and today we are moving into the final phase of that particular journey. We have, for example, been working on the range and brand of retreats that we will be offering from 2027 onwards: cultural but cosy; focused but flexible; professional but relaxed. In addition to our acclaimed writing retreats we have added our first poetry retreat - led by the award-winning poet Susannah Hart - and further Shakespeare retreats, covering everything from the Henriad to the Late Plays. But the wholly new additions to our plans are our in-house Reading Retreats and our Self-Guided Walking Holidays (for walkers who enjoy culture!). Our ambition is to add further literary retreats in due course, and end up with a balanced programme of weekday and weekend retreats that exploit our location, our property's history, and our love of literature in all its forms.

In conclusion, the final stage of becoming a retreat centre is finally on the horizon. The final piece of the puzzle will be the new signage (which we expect to be commissioning by the end of 2026) that proclaims us in just five words: 'Bron Y Graig Retreat Centre'.

Till next time,

Nic