Dawnie – old wild Smoke

I hiked 18km to work this morning, crossing London NW to SE.  Caught dawn on the river.

Been working in Canary Wharf this month, surrounded by the wet stuff and in sight of the docks.  History and wild just under the shiny corporate surface.  It gets me thinking.  I give my days to my office aircon, but for the price of a coffee I could unlock enough hours to follow the water in the old way.

I leave my house in West Hampstead at 04:44, because that’s poetic and also because I promised to be at my desk by 08:15.  It’s 2 days past the full moon and she stays high.  A biting clear night, and I’m easy as I push familiar ground.

At 04:56 I hear the first birdsong, but it’s an insomniac, all out of whack.  The second call comes from a pair of robins at 05:12.  Still dark.

I’m not a nervous city dweller, but in a nod to being a lone female I resist the temptation of a nighttime stroll through the parks.  I waver at pretty Primrose Hill but turn back and skirt the edges – keep common sense.  Foxes playing chase at 05:19.  I pass Regents Park and here I do feel exposed; unheard and unheeded.  Pick up the pace, tuck blonde hair under my collar.  The very first hint of lightening sky on the horizon, 05:30.

With relief I hit the main artery, Euston Road already alive with commuters, and the deserted dark roads of north London are behind me.  I melt into streets that know me, passing my old student halls at 05:45.  Sip scalding jasmine green tea from my Thermos.

05:50 into Soho – far from the first time, but rarely from this end of the night.  Sky showing a first deep blue as I hit Covent Garden, hospitality waking to the day.  Chairs scraping, aprons tying, a waft of something baked.  Then at 06:12 I wind round the back of the Savoy onto the Embankment, and from now I’ll follow the river.

As I find the water, the first pre-dawn rainbow in the East sends me scrambling up a bulwark to snap photos, grinning like a child.  Pause as I figure out how to get back down, fingers numb.

Walk on to Blackfriars, where the river drops away behind roadworks and places not made for people, and here I have to defy Google to stay on the banks and not be sucked up towards the City.  Oh, metaphors.

I’m vindicated by the realisation that the Thames Path is long and true to its companion, and I can walk it almost all the way.

Past all the sights – Tower Bridge, the Tower’s turrets, HMS Belfast – I and a few morning joggers, plus the odd requisite Japanese tourist, even at 7am.

Google and private residence signs try to turn me away at Wapping, but I hop a small fence and am suddenly rewarded with a fireball sunrise.  It catches me unawares, and I laugh out loud with the surprise of it, red over grey green blue at 07:24.

I wore trainers, and I’m limping now from pressure on my achilles.  But I’m only just bang on time, so I push the pace hard to afford myself short photo and thermos breaks.  It’s worth it.  Ducking down algae-grown apartment steps brings me onto stretches of sandy beach, fresh green seaweed around my Nikes, for all the world a seaside morning.

It makes me laugh again, the incongruity – standing in this silent private wilderness, waves lapping, watching the sun rise over my shiny city target.  07:33.  More jasmine tea and I press on fast.  Past docks and cranes, warehouses and shipping containers, where the developments are fewer and old London closer.  The history of river trade and industry still raw and near.

Fresh lemon light spreads through the haze, and suit-trainer combos form their own tide towards the city, matching my stride.  A little less disheveled and windswept, and not  obviously limping.

But my mind is brimming with the full moon, the foxes’ wild dash, fire over water and the clink of metal on the docks, the breeze on the foreshore in a rose tint dawn, sand under my feet.  And when I hit the Wharf, first I hit the actual wharf, and briefly it still feels a maritime creature.  I’m 4 minutes from work when corporate London finally closes around me, and I walk into aircon and stillness and coffee.

And all day I can’t shed the wild I was in out there.

 

Mad to Live Retreats

“…the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn…”

– Jack Kerouac, On the Road

For a week, I joined the raddest girl gang there is.  And then I didn’t write about it for a month, unsure how to pour all the blazing sun and breezy dawnies, blue surf and red cliffs, morning yoga and midnight pizza, the dancing and dreaming, all onto a blank white page.

Meet Sophie Everard, a giggling cussing firework in cutoff denim short shorts.  Warm, formidable, unstoppable bombshell of free-spirited trailblazing.  Aka Mama Turtle, for the care she took shepherding her brood (us) in the water, taking pride in our every baby wave (and cackling at our more epic wipeouts).

Photo: Hannah Edy

Sophie’s Mad to Live retreats bring together adventurous women for a week of the everything.  The Portugal retreat has 8 of us freewheeling through a schedule of surfing, yoga, horseriding, mountainbiking, trail hiking, dam jumping, beach lazing, shopping, dancing, girls’ night movie watching and tattooing (optional).  Sangria and food feature strongly.

First week of October, stiff from early flights and airport aircon, we arrive home to a colourful cobblestone Lagos street.  Rooms built around the fairylight-strung courtyard where we’ll have all our meals and a fair bit of wine.  We wander, we lunch, we introduce, and then we grab our new Roxy towels and hit the beach to let sunset yoga unwind us.  Spanish yoga teacher Igor is a gentle soul with a voice made for Savasana.  People have been known to ask for tapes, I’m told.

Photo: Hannah Edy

Meet Lucy, Sophie’s co-host; a bronzed hippy beauty with a deadpan crackshot humour that has us in fits all week.  Even when it’s pre-dawn on the first Sunday morning and we’re up and out for a sunrise hike.  We traipse the trails up to the high cliff paths and down to the sea caves, whooping at the views, solidly earning breakfast.

We have four full surf days, on different beaches – we start on the west coast in punchy whitewater, spend two days on the nearby balmy Meia Praia catching some lovely baby greens, and when that goes flat we head wave-hunting back west.  Through forest nature reserves, windows down, car filled with sun and pine.  Two trusty instructors from Lagos’ cult classic Surf Experience look after us all week, along with Sophie and Lucy, ensuring we get out in the water and don’t just succumb to sunbathing.

Photo: Hannah Edy

We paddle, we wipeout, we triumph, we flop.  We sunbathe and eat picnic lunches on the beach.  We pop up, we fall down, we cheer each other on and we sing at the top of our lungs the entire ride home.  It’s hard to put into words the laughing tornado that is 10 feisty women thrown together 24-7.

Photo: Hannah Edy

There’s an epic mountainbiking trail ride I miss out on, as I get struck down by something for a couple of days (possibly sunstroke, we speculate after 10 hours in 33*C).  Instead, I scramble gently around the clifftops at Ponta de Piedade, inhale red soil and blue water below, drink it in.  Walk slowly back into town, taking care to stop regularly for pastel de nata fuel like any responsible patient.

The next day we spend on a ranch, practising technique in the pool (argh turtle rolls) and riding out.  I have possibly my favourite hour of week on the lovely, impeccably trained Rubi, cantering the hill paths.  On the way home we stop at a dam bridge, from which the braver few dive into the cool depths below for an adrenaline kick proper.  Safe to say I keep dry here – it’s a choose-your-own-adventure kind of week.

Photo: Hannah Edy

Most of our meals are in our courtyard or on the rooftop of the Surf Experience surfhouse, all conjured by the amazing Kim – healthy, ridiculously delicious fare.  Some nights we venture out for dinner and dancing – Sunday kicking things off with a live funk band beachside under a flaming sunset.  No filters, truly.

Sophie – who despite her chilled nomadic ways is one of the most motivated, organised women I know – spurs us on, cracks us up and inspires us to live as we would.  We go to bed each night – at wildly different times according to inclination – exhausted, salty haired and full.  Of the day and of life.  And probably still humming 90’s hip-hop from that afternoon’s drive.

Which is really the only thing from this retreat that I’m willing to leave behind as I come home.

 

 

Yoga flavour

It occurs to me how lucky I was with my first yoga classes.  Free ones, downstairs in my work gym on a Tuesday lunchtime, at a City employer, but the classes were dynamic enough to keep my attention, the teacher engaging, and hindsight tells me how good a basic practice she led.

I found my next teacher by accident, at a dance studio that happened to hold a weekly yoga session.  Instant love.

Move Your Frame

Most fundamentally, both were, by chance, a kind of yoga I enjoyed – out of so many possibilities that I now know are out there.  I hadn’t realised then how much a practice can vary.

Ashtanga, Iyengar, Mysore, Bikram, Rocket, Yin, Forrest, Dharma Mittra, Acro, Vinyasa flow… the options are multiplying.  Offshoots have offshoots, and teachers have personal styles on top of that.

Triyoga

What interests me is that, as avidly as I think I love yoga, I only truly completely enjoy some of it.  Perhaps even quite a narrow spectrum – dynamic, normal temperature, not too much gymnastics, no props, plus some “je ne sais quois” factors on top of that.

Triyoga – welltodolondon

And frankly, unless you have a really strong practice of your own, the teacher makes a real difference – from the vibe to the techniques, information to adjustments; some teachers just make you want to come back more than others.

These days I test out quite a lot of different studios, teachers and styles, and I’m slightly shocked to realise that my tastes aren’t broad, and I accidentally fell in to just the right thing for me.

Shocked, but perhaps not surprised; life can be funny like that, and I have a track record of honing in on obsessive hobbies.

Sky garden

But all this also to say – if you tried it once and you didn’t like it, pick another flavour, try another place.

Flow in the Dark

Rocket Yoga.

No, me neither.

Derived from classical Indian Ashtanga in the 1980’s, it was nicknamed the Rocket by its San Francisco creator, Larry Schultz, because it “gets you there faster”.  More recently, in the London press, it’s been described as a traditionalist flow for those who like to break a few rules.  Rebel yoga, of sorts.

Frankly, it sounded a little intimidating, and I can’t say I would have run to try the nearest class.  But along came Secret Urban Escape‘s event offering: a glow in the dark Rocket yoga session, complete with blacklights, face paint and glowsticks. Followed by a raw food dinner from Maple & Fitz.  In a Shoreditch photo studio. Signed right up, didn’t ask questions.

The Rocket Yoga session was taught by a lovely Kathryn Fielding who – armed with a great playlist – led us through swift flowing sequences, pushing us to a thorough sweat.  Always with an eye to the technical detail, and drilling into us the need to breathe.  Breathe breathe breathe, and focus on the breath.  Always key in yoga, but a necessity when you’re moving in a fast constant flow.  This, I loved.

I am easily distracted, my mind whirring away in the background while devoting, say, 50% of its attention to the yogic task at hand.  But the need to stay in movement, and to pay rapid attention to each inhale and exhale on the way, left nothing spare for thinking.  And the pace was fun, pure fun.  Partway through the beginning sequence, I found myself (briefly) in downward dog, a grin on my face, laughter bubbling up – the joy you get from bursting into a sprint, or skipping down the street.

On a high, energised and wanting to do it again immediately – or as soon as my muscles stopped shaking.

Still, it’s not like me to not mention the food.  Maple & Fitz, a Fitzrovia raw food, health food and juice bar, came up trumps with packed mealboxes of foodie joy.

Can’t tell you what they really looked like; still dark.  So don’t shoot the photographer.  But my tastebuds suggested grains, kale, a flavourful white cheese, cashews, cabbage, squash and an amazing lemony dressing.

What I’m really saying here is: pay close attention.  You have here a goldmine.

Secret Urban Escape – pop up fitness events around the Big Smoke, varied and brilliant.

Maple & Fitz – only for those within reach of central London, but what a clean food find it is.  Those elsewhere should take a good look at the menu on the website for ideas of simple execution and complex flavour.

Rocket yoga – if you like running barefoot on the beach, snowball fights or dancing, I suggest you simply try it, wherever you are.

Sign right up, don’t ask questions and go with the flow.