Retreats and Courses, 2026
Independent Writing Retreats
Responding to demand, we are now open for independent retreats from: 4th May - 29th June (closed first week June) and from 6th September - 4th October.
Do you want to retreat? Does that sound like a break, a rest, a quiet room? A chance to meet other like-minded folk? A journey inward, a digital detox, an uplift; a change? It can feel like all of those things. It’s an opportunity. And a risk. Can you trust in the creative part of you to get you here ? Can you trust the curious, the wild will?
We will provide a delicious nutritious breakfast, lunch and dinner, a comfortable room to rest in and write. Someone else to cook for you and wash up :) Also morning yoga, evening meditation and a wood-fired sauna + cold plunge. We will take you along the river (in this picture) at Fingle Bridge on Dartmoor and do our best to ensure you have time and space to focus on your project. Extras include writing consultation with a Bloomsbury mentor and author. You can choose the length of stay, with a minimum of 3 nights. £55 - £150per night, depending on the accommodation you choose. If you want to bring your own place to sleep by way of tent or motorhome, please let us know. We don’t want cost to be a barrier to participation.
Tutored Retreat - (fully booked)
Poetry and Place: A Midsummer Writing Week
Jonathan Edwards & Fiona Benson
5-day poetry writing course
-22-27 June,2026
Join Jonathan Edwards (tutor) and Fiona Benson (guest speaker) to draw inspiration from a landscape which has been sacred to poets including Alice Oswald and Ted Hughes. We will spend some time exploring the rivers of Dartmoor National Park and the extinct volcano up at Posbury. We’ll pursue a wide range of writing approaches, exploring the beauty, the sounds and creatures of this place as well as other homes and landscapes. We’ll write about people - banter and gossip, dialect and slang - exploring how we relate. This bubbling, surging environment will burst out of us in energetic and vibrant voice and find its way through you so that you reach the end of the week with a sheaf of new draft poems.
Jonathan Edwards (tutor). Fiona Benson (guest speaker) Open to locals and those who want to stay with us) -£300 without accommodation or camping/£450-600 full board. Max 12 participants. 8 residential spaces. Morning and evening workshops, afternoons to write, read, relax, walk. Morning yoga; wood-fired sauna + cold plunge. Literary evening and half hour 1-2-1 tutorial with Jonathan.
Tutored Retreat
Develop Your Book Idea
4-day writing course:
27- 31 Aug, 2026 (Adharanand Finn, guest speaker)
4-8 Oct 2026(1 residential place left)
Join Natalie Young on a 5-day writing course to turn your idea from a kernel in your mind into something fully formed. Have you felt yourself grabbed or amused by a thought about a book you could write? Have you been planning to knuckle down to that story for a while? Perhaps it’s been haunting you? Gnawing away? Perhaps it already exists in a draft? Let’s commit together by bringing these book ideas to the workshops and have the afternoons to work on what we explored with the group.
Natalie Young (tutor). Open to locals and those who want to stay with us). £299 without accommodation (includes lunch)/£440-camping and up to £720 full board (depending on room choice). Max 12 participants. 8 residential spaces. Morning workshops, afternoons to write, read, relax, walk. 3 yoga classes included, wood-fired sauna + cold plunge. Literary evening and 30 mins 1-2-1 tutorial with Natalie on work in progress (can also be done online after completion of the course)