A yoga retreat you say? In a Castillo nestled in the Tuscan hills with a day trip to Florence? All I had to do was some photo-shoots? It was like Karma had sent me the phone call from heaven. After a full on summer of sport, both watching and competing, I need some quality downtime and was already packing my yoga mat before you could say downward dog.

Alpha Male scoffed at the vegetarian food, detox and meditation bit but then realised that he was also missing out on a week of girls doing yoga in bikinis by a poolside and wished he was more in touch with his inner energy, or I think that’s what he said…. Personally I need to indulge in a selfish week of me time away from the noises in London and feel the sun on my back.

Arriving at a new destination is always special, but some are quite magical. An hour from Pisa airport we arrived at the most stunning view over fields and distant mountain ranges  glowing in an orange sunset. I switched off my phone and listened to the crickets chirping the evening into darkness; wrapping a blanket over my shoulders I sat on bench and watched the stars gently glow, trying to bottle up that night up in my memory.


Sadly my back wasn’t so relaxed, after 3 bulging discs the previous year and scrambling on yachts this summer it decided to play up again. My meditation instead was done alone at dawn, swimming 100 lengths in ice cold pool, swimming and thinking, swimming and thinking. All you need is space and yourself to process your thoughts, but being in a beautiful pool overlooking a Tuscan hill does help a lot too.


We’d started the week as a group of relative strangers but become great friends at the end and after a week it was hard to say goodbye to our Italian sanctuary. As much as we’d learnt to understand each other we’d also learnt to understand ourselves a bit better, and that’s an amazing gift to bring back from your holiday.

The Yoga Retreat was organised by Love Yoga Bum. Please see  www.loveyogabum.com for details of future retreats.

Words and photos by Kitty Buchanan-Gregory