Episode 2: Take Me To The Lakes - An Invitation To Re-enchant The Way We Retreat
Dear Enchanted One,
Welcome back to To Be Enchanted.
I’m Georgie, and in today’s episode, I’m inviting you to join me behind the scenes as I unveil the vision behind Take Me to the Lakes, a deeply poetic and intentional retreat nestled in the Lake District in England.
This is not simply an announcement it is a love letter.
A devotional call to the wanderers, the artists, the seekers.
To those who yearn not for escape, but for exquisite re-arrival.
In this sacred offering, I want to share with you the deeper philosophy that guides every thread of this retreat. Why I created it. What it means. And how it was born from a longing, my longing, and perhaps yours too, to reimagine the way we retreat….not as a break from life, but as a pilgrimage into it.
Let us begin, as always, with story.
Take Me to the Lakes was born not from a business plan, but from the heart.
I had been journeying through a season of deep inner winter. One of those quiet, soul-thickening chapters where everything is gestating beneath the surface. I’m sure you know the kind.
A time of inner questioning:
How do I wish to gather?
What is my capacity?
Where do I belong?
Am I happy with the harvest of my life at this moment?
What does true rest look like for me, not just the kind the world applauds, but the kind my creative soul actually craves?
And woven within that quiet, a deeper truth emerged, one that has slowly, softly shaped the rhythm of my days.
As my Scleroderma progressed, and with it, the complications of Dysphagia, I found myself retreating from the expansive and outward, and returning to the quiet sanctuaries that have always held me. I no longer felt the call to roam far and wide.
Instead, I began to listen more closely to the call of the land beneath my feet and to the familiar rain-softened hills and mirror-like waters of my childhood.
As a girl of the North West of England, the Lake District was never just a landscape: it was a lifeblood. A place of sanctuary, of poetry, of memory. And in this season of stillness, I returned to it not just as a visitor, but as a pilgrim. I joined the lineage of creatives, from the Wordsworths and Ruskin, to Beatrix Potter and even modern-day muses like Taylor Swift, who have found their refuge and re-enchantment in these ancient, whispering hills.
Here, the land just knows how to cradle the weary. It has done so for centuries. And in these sacred surrounds, I asked not what I should do, but how I wished to be.
And always, always, I heard the same reply.
Take me to the lakes.
Take me to the beauty.
Take me to the poetry.
Take me to the soul of a place.
Not for a luxury escape….but for a remembering.
This is what Take Me to the Lakes is.
It is a retreat designed not just to soothe, but to awaken.
Rooted in the sacred arts and inspired by the mythology, folklore and artistic legacy of the Lake District, this retreat is a gentle weaving together of literature, art, music, nature, and myth, a call to come home to your creative self.
In many ways, this retreat is an ode to the Romantics: to the way they walked, wept, and wondered through the hills and wildflower-strewn lakes. But it’s also a reclamation and a reimagining.
The Romantics were not simply poets of pretty prose, they were rebels of the soul. They turned their backs on industrial noise and found salvation in birdsong. They left behind the smog of cities for the clear breath of the fells. William Wordsworth, John Keats, and their kindred spirits didn’t just visit the Lake District, they escaped in to it.
They became the heartbeat of a new kind of poetry: one tethered to nature, sensation, and the sanctity of solitude. For many, it was deemed eccentric. But for them, and for all of us who follow the thread, it was a return to truth.
And so too for Taylor Swift, who, centuries later, would echo this very pilgrimage.
Speaking about her song The Lakes, Taylor revealed that it was a testament to what she longed to escape from, and where she envisioned herself escaping to.
In a conversation with her collaborator Jack Antonoff (as seen in the video above), she described how she could feel the pull of the poets who had come before her. The way they sought refuge in the Lake District and turned their yearning into verse. She imagined a cottage with wisteria curling up its walls, and she understood, with marrow-deep clarity, why they left the world behind and made art instead, and why they kept writing, and refused to subscribe to what was killing them.
The Lakes is her homage to this poetic lineage, and to the quiet rebellion of creativity that dares to bloom in stillness. It is, in its own way, a folk song of remembrance. The very essence of what she would later capture in folklore.
And so, dear heart, this retreat is not just about the Romantics.
It is for you.
For your life. Your story. Your enchantment.
It is for the one who is exhausted by over-consumption and ready for creation.
It is for the one whose body is calling for rhythm, ritual, and remembrance.
It is for the one whose creativity is aching to be tended like a sacred hearth.
Each day of the retreat is crafted as a soft ritual in itself.
We’ll root ourselves at Lanehead, a Georgian house with a soul all its own, once the home of the Collingwood family, close companions of Ruskin.
This warm and storied sanctuary, nestled between Coniston Water and the wild embrace of the fells, holds a special place in literary history.
It was here that a young Arthur Ransome found a second family and the inspiration for Swallows and Amazons, his love letter to freedom, adventure, and childhood imagination. At Lanehead, the spirit of creative play still lingers in the light, and you’ll be welcomed as though stepping into a novel all your own.
From our haven at Lanehead, we’ll step inside stories that have long shaped the soul of the Lakes.
In Grasmere, we’ll visit the hallowed hush of Dove Cottage, where Dorothy and William Wordsworth once wove poetry from the mists and the mountains. Here, you’ll have ample time to wander freely, to write, to breathe deeply in a village where the soul of Romanticism still rests in the air.
We’ll then gather at Rydal Mount: a home still lovingly held by the Wordsworth family. In that sacred setting, we’ll share a private afternoon of poetry readings, a guided tour of the house, and a gentle feast of wine, juice, and the iconic Grasmere gingerbread, as though we, too, were guests of William and Mary, gathered beneath the wisteria.
Another day invites us into the world of Beatrix Potter at Hill Top Cottage, where Herdwick sheep still graze in the green meadows she so tenderly protected. With every footstep and sketch, we’ll honour her devotion to land, lore, and the creatures who still dance through her illustrated tales.
And then, to Brantwood, the enthralling home of John Ruskin, where the vistas speak of visionaries and reformers who stirred both the artistic and spiritual imagination of Britain. As dusk falls over Coniston, we’ll be serenaded by a string quartet performing Taylor Swift’s music by candlelight, a poetic crescendo to a day filled with beauty and reverence.
Between these pilgrimages, you’ll be lovingly held in a rhythm of soul-restoring offerings: sacred lectures on the lives and legacies of these remarkable creatives, gentle invitations to reflect or create, and spacious intervals to simply drift, dream, or do nothing at all.
And most of all, there will be the space, the sacred space, to simply be.
To be in stillness. To be in beauty.
To be enchanted again.
As I write in the Substack piece and blog post I’ll link in the show notes, this retreat is not just a creative getaway. It is a threshold.
A liminal passage into a slower, softer, more soul-led way of being.
It is not about performing your artistry: it is about living it.
And this, beloved listener, is the kind of enchanted living that, at The Academy of the Enchanted Arts, I am devoted to honouring.
So if your heart is whispering “yes”……..
If your soul is yearning for sacred pause…….
If you’re ready to move through a season not with hustle, but with honour……
I would be so deeply honoured to welcome you.
Places are intentionally limited, so if your soul feels called, I encourage you to follow that whisper.
I have placed an accessible and extended payment plan in place for all bookings before March 2026, to help ensure that this sacred space remains open to all who are meant to walk through its doors.
You can choose from a serene single-occupancy room for deep retreat and reflection, or a double room to share with kindred spirits or cherished friends.
All details and the booking link are lovingly waiting for you by clicking right here [https://learn.academyoftheenchantedarts.com/courses/take-me-to-the-lakes-retreat].
May this be the season you say yes to wonder.
Yes to enchantment.
Yes to the art of being.
Thank you so deeply for walking this path with me today.
For listening with your whole heart, for dreaming with me.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll see you at the lakes….
Because “not without you, my muse,” as the song you all know goes.
This retreat is already so soul-rich and tenderly imagined….
but it will be even more perfect: because of you.
So, until next time beloved, may you always remember….
You were born to be enchanted.
With love and enchantment,
Georgie xoxo
Click here to journey with me to The Lake District [https://learn.academyoftheenchantedarts.com/courses/take-me-to-the-lakes-retreat]
Get full access to The Academy of the Enchanted Arts at academyoftheenchantedarts.substack.com/subscribe [https://academyoftheenchantedarts.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
