Happy New Year to all our friends and family that have enjoyed the peace and quiet of A Place to Write in 2023, and to anyone who is looking forward to joining us in 2024. We hope the coming twelve months are full of good health, much happiness and some great achievements for all of you. On that note, we are delighted to have discovered that, over the Christmas and New Year period, our February tutored retreat has become the first A Place to Write retreat to sell out completely - all rooms and places fully booked - and we're looking forward to a fantastic gathering of talent in that month. It is less than a year since we offered our first retreats but our reputation is clearly spreading.
The success we had with our writing retreat programme in 2023 means we have been looking at ways to expand it in 2024. These include not only extending our retreat programme for writers, but also developing the previously mentioned Shakespeare retreats, alongside a brand new programme of Photography and Art sessions. There is an abundance of inspiring material, places and opportunities in North Wales for photographers and artists, and much of it is on our doorstep! For example, on New Year's Day, Wendy and I went for a walk in the stunning Clocaenog Forest - just a twenty minute drive away but not somewhere we had previously explored. It is a place of such natural beauty and magic that we will be revisiting it very soon and we will also be offering optional walks there for guests on our retreats. The photo opportunities alone are numerous and include an abandoned woodman's cottage, a fairy-like grotto with moss enfolding everything it touches, and a stunning pond in the midst of a tree-lined landscape. We feel very lucky to be in an area of such outstanding natural beauty and can guarantee that, if nature is your thing, you will love it here too.
Aside from the natural beauty, we also have the fantastic Llangollen to Corwen heritage railway on our doorstep: whether you're imagining a murder on the Orient Express or taking a step back in time to the Victorian Era, A Place to Write can provide inspiration and adventure on both counts: our retreat centre is a 19th Century Sheriff's property, and the railway is visible from our terraced gardens! Step back in time and live the life of your characters as you write their stories. And don't forget that at the rear of our property there's our own personal mountain stream - almost a waterfall at present, with the rains running off the Berwyns after recent storms! - and our peculiar, abandoned old slate quarry. Both of these locations offer unique inspiration (and adventure) of their own too.
But the principal feature of our retreats is actually the atmosphere here: we are so lucky to be located in a peaceful, beautiful location with stunning buildings around us and amazing views - both during the day and at night when the dark skies expose the universe through the stars. Through the day and night, too, our bedrooms are places where writers can choose to hide away from the world while they write or, perhaps better still, look out upon it - knowing they are never far from civilisation. And our social spaces are, as you would expect from a hospitality business - full of warmth, character and friendship from morning till night. Wendy and I both love meeting new people, making new friendships and creating memorable events and our writing retreats help us to do just that. So, in conclusion, for all of us at A Place to Write, 2024 offers not only a New Year for us to look forward too, but a new sense of adventure and expectation too. We hope it does the same for you.
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