Step into an oasis of calm that’s also a Grand Design…

‘What drew you here?’ I asked a couple of nutrition coaches from Portsmouth as we sat in the sauna at one of Channel Four’s most famous Grand Designs. ‘Ooh, we had to see the house,’ they giggled. ‘We love a nose,’ agreed a mother and daughter couple, who go for a retreat day together a couple of times a year.

The lure of the grand design is an interesting idea. The borrowed fairy tale can be so other-worldly that it becomes a kind of liminal space for the yoga, breath work and natural swimming pond dip/sauna/hot tub prescription to work its magic.

But for anyone who saw the episode in which interior designer and architect couple, Nina and Dan, built their dream out of a Shrek-like swamp, the site of our day retreat was a story of transformation that we could all learn from.

Set in Bosham, one of the south coast’s most photogenic locations, The Watershed is a triumph of manifestation over the reality of glaziers failing to get your windows made in time. It’s a vision of how to make your dreams come true. In spite of Brexit, Covid, and Dan’s lovely dad dying before the magic could happen. As parallel narratives to accompany your yoga day go, it’s a good one.

How the dream began

As she showed us around the extraordinary space, regaling us with tales of the TV show experience and the hellish build, Nina told us how the biophilic design is about bringing the outside in. The vast windows look out onto the water and the garden, while the natural materials they’ve used for the interiors are all part of the plan to enhance well-being, health and productivity. It’s a very good place to retreat for the day.

After the first session, yoga overlooking the natural swimming pool, it was time for the dip. Now, I know a little about the oxygenating plants that purify a pond, creating an Eden for wildlife as the frogs, newts and dragonflies turn up the biodiversity volume. We’d almost gone the same route with the pond at our own eco-house in East Sussex, also home to retreats, but we decided that the ducks and geese might get more use from it. Dan and Nina have divided their pond; half for their human guests and the other half for the more indigenous swimmers.

It was always going to be a challenge to work with the elements, particularly the pond; ‘Like a narcissistic lover, water will destroy a building,’ Grand Design’s Kevin McCloud warns at the beginning of their build, as he surveys their plans. By the end of the episode, he clocks that these two clearly have someone to watch over them, as they dodge the bullets and brace themselves against the slings and arrows of life on a building site with two small children and a new puppy. The result is another triumph; a crystal-clear pool which the house perches upon, rather like the ducks on ours.

How could I not go in for a dip?

Yoga leader Anna Coates prepared the group. Trained in Wim Hof breathwork, she showed us how the breath can make all the difference to an icy swim.  ‘Dithering around’ in the shallows, she told us, confuses the body which is waiting to kick into protection mode. Commit to getting straight in up to your chest, exhaling slowly rather than panic breathing, and your body will do the rest, she said. The blood will flow to the surface, turning the skin a healthy pink.

I’m not sure I stayed in long enough to experience the ‘stabbing’ and the ‘electric fanny’ that everyone was chatting about in the sauna, but let’s just say that I’ve been having cold showers ever since.

And so to lunch!

After a vegetarian lunch of burnt spring onions with ajo blanco, cavolo nero salad with sweet potato, beetroot and fat couscous, caramelised cauliflower and coconut soup, it was time to manifest our own dreams.

Guided by chantress, sound healer and breathwork coach, Camilla Hamblin, we used the gentle rhythmic pranayamic long breath mixed with a more activated short exhale to lead us into a meditation where our unconscious was waiting to have a word.

As we shared in small groups afterwards, there were plenty of tears as those who came for the view had a whole new way of seeing how to rebuild their own lives. Busy couples looked at each other as if for the first time. Workaholics, yoga sceptics and, yup even nay-saying cold water swimmers like me had a whole new vision of how life could be. And we hadn’t even had the cacao ceremony and sound bath yet.

If houses could smile, I think the Watershed was rather pleased with the spell she had cast.

Kevin McCloud ends the episode of Grand Designs with a quote from American architect Charles Moore, who according to Aaron Betsky in The Architectural Review, had ‘the ability to make the fantastical seem logical, and the sensual seem necessary.’

‘Buildings should be the instruments of connection, not of isolation,’ says Kevin as he assesses the finished dream house. ‘The question is: what do you want to be connected to?’

The next day retreat is 2 May 2025, and the venue is available for hire
www.thewatershed.co.uk