Swans and things

Yesterday was the most golden, blue-skied day we’ve had for a while.  After the snow thawed, there came more flooding, but one of the wonderful things that happens here when it floods is that the swans from the river start landing on the flooded fields and when the water recedes they often stay for weeks.  Yesterday was so lovely, Mel went out for a walk with the camera and took some pictures including some of the swans.

    

We’ ve also recently been having some amazing cobwebs in the Poulstone meadow.  Thousands of tiny spiders lay their webs in drifts across the grass and when the sunlight illuminates them, it looks like a shining path of silver to the sun!

 

Beautiful!

Hope you’re getting a little sunshine too?

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre


Rabbit tracks in the snow…!

We’ll, we’ve just had a wonderfully snowy week and were lucky enough to enjoy it without having to worry about guests travelling on icy roads. In fact, the timing was very good – all our deliveries had come and we had a week before our first group arrived.

So we just enjoyed being snowed in and went for lovely walks down by the river.  Steve had a fascinating time tracking in the snow the movement of all the rabbits that are currently decimating our bulbs!  We’d put up some barriers to the walled garden and could clearly see where they had tried to get around them.  In fact, it’s a good job everything has thawed as it could have become something of an obsession!  We may just have to stick to daffodils which they don’t seem very keen on…..We mainly stayed cosy up at home but Mel made occasional forays out to the rather parky office to check the phone and emails.

Fortunately, the roads thawed in time for a rare opportunity to get all the staff together in one place.  Because of the part-time nature of the work, we can all be a bit ships-in-the-night, so it was lovely to have an all-day staff meeting up in the facilitator’s flat to be together, talk about things, and share lunch (Steve’s wildly experimental but very good spicy aduki bean shepherd’s pie which was wonderful teamed up with one of Hilary’s home-grown cabbages!).

We now have a new yoga group in this weekend tutored by Suzanne Jevon-Hughston who is a local teacher.  The sun put in its first appearance for a while this morning.  So it was lovely, fresh and bright for their mid morning walk.  Next week we have a group of shamans coming, who have been working at Poulstone for over two decades!!  Some of them come from west Wales in very rural locations so we are hoping that the thaw will continue and they can get to us easily.

More soon!

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from everyone at Poulstone!

We hope you had a peaceful and relaxing time over the Christmas break?

Ours was quiet and cosy and spent with family.  We did have to remove a flock of sheep from the veg patch on Boxing Day morning (!) but otherwise it was a wonderful opportunity to unwind…

We’re looking forward to receiving our first guests soon and hope we see you here some time in 2013.

Warm wishes and love,

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre

Merry Christmas!

So, last day in the office today (hopefully….!) before we break for Christmas.

We had a lovely pre-Christmas celebration with Hilary, Gail and Gemma.  We met in Hereford at the Cathedral for craft stalls and carols before having lunch and coffee & cakes at the wonderful All Saint’s Cafe in All Saint’s Church.

Later we went and saw  that old Christmas favourite, The Muppet’s Christmas Carol, at The Courtyard Arts Centre Cinema, which got us nicely into the Christmas spirit – the jury is still out over whether Hilary or Mel cried the most over Tiny Tim!!  More tea and cake afterward before we said our end-of-year goodbyes and headed home.  Despite the grey day, it felt a lovely start to the festivities.

From everyone at Poulstone, we wish you a wonderful festive season, however you celebrate it, and a peaceful and happy New Year to come.

With love

Mel & Steve

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre

The Poulstone blog is here!

Ta-naaah!  The Poulstone blog is here!  We hope that you’ll enjoy keeping in touch with us via the blog and would like to thank our friend and webmaster Mick Tomlinson for creating it for us.  Thanks, Mick!

It’s a reflective time for us at the moment.  1st May saw our 5th Anniversary of running Poulstone and it’s an opportunity for us to pause and take stock.  The first 5 years have really been about being as thrifty as possible in order to pay for essential repairs and developments for the house and to renovate the gardens.

Having completed much (although by no means all) of the work that needed doing when we started 5 years ago, we now want to find ways of being here that have an even and constant feel to them rather than the huge bursts of energy that have been needed to get things to where they are now.  We want to arrive at a sense of just tending things.  There is more of a feeling of ease now which we’re really enjoying.

There have been many miracles along the way, both large and small, and we really want to express our gratitude to everyone for their support, including those in spirit. Particular thanks go to the teachers and friends who have helped us in the holding of this special environment.

We are holding a Friends’ Day on 11th August at the end of the work retreat as a thank you to everyone who has supported Poulstone over the last five years – by running or attending courses or by contributing work, expertise or resources, or by providing moral support!  (You know who you are xx)!

Do get in touch if you’d like to join us for lunch and/or for the afternoon – or indeed if you’d like to join the work retreat (there are still some places left).

We’re looking forward to the years ahead at Poulstone, as well as keeping in touch with you all via the blog and our quarterly newsletter.

Much love, Mel & Steve x

Poulstone Court Retreat Centre