Creativity Flourishing in Assynt

It's the week after our second creative retreat and the glow is just starting to subside. It was a wonderful week. Glencanisp Lodge was packed with creative writers, who all worked and played incredibly hard all week long and produced some fantastic writing.

Everything is optional on our creative retreats, because we know that some people want to come to pursue their work in progress at their own pace, with as few distractions as possible. But we do provide options and it is always interesting to see which are taken up by the guests.

Each day we begin with creative warm-ups, led by Mandy Haggith, and these attracted more and more people as the week went along. Enthusiasm for these warm-up exercises was so strong by the end of the week, that we're going to try to find a way to help our guests to keep doing them after they go home. There were writing workshops some days, which covered topics from expressing emotions to writing a good beginning. There were several guided walks, some with writing exercises built in, and the weather was kind to us. Our walk at Inverkirkaig, to read Norman MacCaig poems and visit Achins bookshop was blessed by a close encounter with a red deer hind and calf, and a stunning rainbow.

Talking of rainbows, we had a visit from Helen Lockhart, our local wool dyeing craftswoman extraordinaire, who entranced the guests with her fabulous yarns in colours inspired by the Assynt landscape. Guests also greatly enjoyed a yoga session with local Iyenga yoga teacher Martin Hall (overheard in the kitchen afterwards, 'that was the best yoga session I have ever had'.) We ate delicious food cooked by Christine Henderson and finished each day off with readings beside the fire. New friendships have been formed and Assynt has been enriched by the creative buzz of the week.

Meanwhile, the Press and Journal has run a feature about Top Left Corner, which makes it sound more like a one-woman-band than it really is, but it's nice publicity all the same.