learning to savour

introducing the first savour retreat

When you’ve got a big piece of exciting news, it can be difficult to let it out. When M and I found out we were going to have a baby, for instance, we managed to bodge telling both sets of parents and countless friends besides. Sometimes I’ve just not told loved ones about certain book deals or exhibition openings because, well, how to bring it up? Anyway, all of this is similar prevarication: I’ve been brewing up plans for an overnight savour retreat, and now I can tell you about it - and I can’t quite believe it.

When Lime Wood, the five star hotel nestled in the woodland of the New Forest, approached me to work on a retreat together, I honestly thought nothing would come of it. But 18 months (and two maternity leaves) later and I found myself listening to birdsong from the balcony of one of their rooms in January. It had been a brutal start to the year for me, but here was peace. The place is beautiful, of course, and the food exquisite. But there was something restorative about the air of it, a gentleness that meant time slowed. I went back on the train, less than 24 hours after I’d left, feeling more like myself. It seemed a very special place to launch the first savour retreat.

The first savour retreat will take place in mid-November. We will spend our time focusing on some of what makes life delicious: the outdoors, paying close attention, giving ourselves the space to do so and leaning into it with all of our senses. I’ll host workshops and gatherings to help encourage you to channel your awareness and creativity and ground your experience in the moment. We’ll write a little! We’ll forage for seasonal ingredients in the forest, and then enjoy tasting them in a private meal created by the hotel’s Chef Director Luke Holder (I’m hoping an homage to brocpasta might make it onto the menu). We’ll lean into a sound bath in the hotel’s Hideout, and come together for a twilight reading in the Glasshouse. In between, you’ll have free rein of Lime Wood’s sumptuous grounds and spa. You’re very welcome to start the day joining me for a pre-breakfast swim looking out at the woodland, or simply stay in bed savouring a lie-in. I hope that you will head back home feeling deeply refreshed but, more, with a deeper understanding of living more meaningfully.

Less than two years ago, I launched savour out of a place of frustration and longing. I wanted to give space to write about things that wouldn’t, typically, find a home in an established magazine. About the taste of the air in Donegal or the joy of the car sweet. Now thousands of you savour with me each week.

Substack’s grown a lot since then. It’s an exciting energy but I’ve found myself trying to remember what drew me here in the first place: not numbers or Notes, but space and attention. “I feel we all deserve to savour a little more in life,” I wrote back then. And I stand by that now. Savouring is a personal practice but it happens in community, too: the teenagers singing happy birthday on the bus, the dinners that stretch out late with laughter, the conversations we have on the Tube.

Increasingly, I want to do things beyond the screen. I want us to savour together - in real time, in person, in special places. Re-Balance: Learning to Savour - the first savour retreat - is part of that, as are a string of smaller, free events that will take place for savour members in coming months. More on those soon.

We’ve deliberately kept Learning to Savour small: just 12 places. I wanted to invite savour members to have the option to book first, so the full details on booking are right here, below the paywall. Thank you so much for reading and supporting; this gentle adventure has been quite the ride.

For more details on Re-Balance: Learning to Savour at Lime Wood, head here.