April 11, 2009

Somehow I got it into my head that this was going to be a silent retreat, with not a syllable spoken: - a potential challenge for interviews. A whole new world of Marcel Marceau journalism seemed to loom ahead.
 

In the event it was silent (for some of us) only during meals at Launde Abbey, the Leicestershire retreat centre near Melton Mowbray. Almost hidden in a landscaped park, it lurks down twisting, hawthorn-hedged lanes that become narrower by the half-mile. Sheep graze in the park, geese bustle around the ponds; the only noise is birdsong. Idyllic? Absolutely.
 

Despite its name, Launde is no longer an abbey but a honey-stoned Elizabethan country house. It runs residential retreats throughout the year, for individuals and groups; many have a Christian basis, others (walking, painting, photography) do not. There is no need to be a “believer” to join them. Someone coined the term “spiritual spa” to sum it all up: taking care of the mind and the soul rather than the body. People who have been there say that it's a sort of internal tourism, a journey into yourself.
 

“Modern spas are doing what we've been doing for centuries,” says Canon Beryl Wood, the deputy warden. “We're giving people a chance to leave their normal lives behind for a few days and chill out. People just push and push themselves these days, so the first challenge is learning how to stop and how to rest, reflect and just ‘be'.”
 

Stressed businessmen and women come here for the peace and quiet, reassured that mobile phone reception is variable and that there are no televisions in the comfortable bedrooms. Some guests bring deckchairs and sit out on the lawns all day. One Danish couple comes three or four times a year.
 

It clearly works. Launde won the silver award for Best Tourism Experience in the East Midlands 2007 Enjoy England Excellence Awards. The winner was a preserved steam railway. I have joined a two-night retreat for first-timers. The 22 of us, largely Christian, have come from as far away as Carlisle, Brighton, Cornwall and Swansea. The retreat, focusing on the life and work of the 20th-century theologian Thomas Merton, is led by Esther de Waal, a leading Merton scholar who describes retreats as being “about confronting the solitary side of ourselves, letting go of the lists and the commitments...it's very important to get off the merry-go-round”. Modern life, she tells the first session, is “so cluttered with words that we don't know how to handle silence”. With that in mind, perhaps, 16 of the group vote to have their meals in silence. The rest of us talk.
 

Down the table Iris West, a retired office worker from Spilsby, Lincolnshire, says that she is enchanted by Launde. “You really are away from it all here,” she says. “It's like a little world of its own.”
 

Next to her, Gordon Eggerton, a transport manager from near Kettering, is a regular retreat-goer. “They can give you a sense of family and community,” he says. “It's like spiritual recharging, to recharge your batteries. For me, it's a chance to allow myself to do nothing. And that's a great luxury in life now, isn't it?”
 

Early in the first session de Waal urges us to take an “awareness walk” - “slow, careful, meditative walking” - and exits ethereally through a French window. Off we go, making our slow-motion way across the park with great deliberation, studying the flowers. The feeling of self-consciousness soon subsides.
 

Walking occupies much of my visit. As a non-Christian I avoid the religious services and some of the discussions and take long walks in the rolling Leicestershire hills, through meadows of cornflowers and buttercups, past copses and spinneys: it's exhilarating walking country, with a spirituality of its own. I stray beyond Launde rather apprehensively, though, fearful of breaking the spell that its tranquil atmosphere casts.
 

I have brought a briefcase full of work with me but, in the event, never glance at it or make phone calls. On the second night I wake at 4am, worrying that I have forgotten what I ought to be worrying about. The retreat has done its job and I go soundly back to sleep.
 

Need to know
 

Launde Abbey (01572 717254, www.launde.org.uk), East Norton, Leicestershire, LE7 9XB.