About the Retreat Centre

Accommodation

On our retreats we usually have up to 29 women, plus a team of 5.  Most of the bedrooms are three bedded, some with en suite bathrooms, and four of them have a bunk bed. We only have 2 (or possibly 3) single rooms, 2 of them on the ground floor, which are designed to be disabled friendly.

Meals

All our food is suitable for vegans, with organic cows milk available for vegetarians. Each day’s menus are designed to provide a tasty healthy balanced diet. Meals are cooked from fresh ingredients, some of which occasionally come from our vegetable beds. Retreatants share the cooking as part of the work rota, but menus and ingredients are put out ready by a member of the team. 

Library

Our library is a quiet, comfortable space and we have an extensive range of Dharma books for you make use of, with a selection available in Spanish and German translation. We keep this room as a silent space throughout the retreat. 

Bookshop

We offer a wide range of Dharma books, cards, notebooks, malas, small rupas and jewellery for sale.

Gardens

We have beautiful grounds to sit or meditate in, or do walking meditation around the stupa containing some of the ashes of Dhardo Rimpoche, which was inaugurated by Sangharakshita. There is a pickers patch in the vegetable garden for flowers to use on the shrine. We ask you not to pick flowers from anywhere else in the garden without checking with one of the team first. The garden at the back of the house is the community's garden, so we ask you not to use this area of the grounds. There is a path especially built that runs along the edge of the garden to a gate into the field, for retreatants to use to exit the grounds when going on a walk.

Environmental Concerns

We are keen to make our retreat centre as environmentally sustainable as possible. Our heating comes from a wood pellet boiler, with only the retreat centre kitchen requiring gas, and we use a green electricity supplier. We recycle as much as possible, buy Fair-trade whenever possible, and all cleaning products are ethically sourced.