When Women Were The Land Retreat

Discover the powerful, ancient historical bond between women and the earth. Explore the matrilineal wisdom held in European land, archeology, mythology and history. This is the healing ground of your own motherline and the chance to reimagine the foundation myths of Europe itself whilst gifting earth-reverence back into the root systems of the present moment. 

Gather with a group of women in the mythic Yorkshire dales for a journey into deep connection with the wildly animate stories of pre-patriarchal Old Europe and the healing ground of your own motherline, guided by author, storyteller, mythologist and wildlife tracker Sylvia V. Linsteadt. 

Over four nights and five days, Sylvia will immerse us in fairytales and myths with roots that reach into the waters of matrilineal Old Europe.  Stories rich with swan-women, talking trees, animal mothers and the all-powerful, singing Earth. 

Through these stories, as well as creative writing exercises, guided nature connection practices on the land, and nightly dreaming prompts, you will explore your own connection to ancestral foremothers, matrilineal memory, and your intimate relationship to the living world, culminating in the writing of your own personal fairytale.

What you will gain:

• A new understanding of the patterns and possibilities of Old European cultures
• Creative practices that access the power of your imagination and intuition
• Knowledge of European myths and folktales from a matrifocal, earth-connected perspective
• Tools for connecting more deeply to the plants, animals and earth where you live
• Understanding of your motherlines, both cultural and personal
• The opportunity to write your own mythic story of motherline blessing, mending, and healing.
• Learn animal tracking as a practice of connection to the land you are in. 

Your Teacher: Sylvia V. Linsteadt

Sylvia is a novelist, mythologist, scholar of ancient history, and a certified animal tracker. For twelve years, her fiction and nonfiction have returned to the same root: myth, ecology, feminism, and the voices of the living land. She is the author of The Venus Year and Our Lady of the Dark Country, the novels The Wild Folk and The Wild Folk Rising (Usborne), the folktale cycle Tatterdemalion (Unbound), and the award-winning Lost Worlds of the San Francisco Bay Area (Heyday).

Sylvia has spent years tracing the traces of pre-patriarchal Old Europe, the cultures archaeologist Marija Gimbutas first described in the mid-twentieth century, cultures that centred mothers, children, and the earth long before the stories most of us grew up with. This retreat is where that research leaves the page. Four days of her actually telling these stories, in a place built for hearing them.

The Land & The Place

Broughton Sanctuary sits on 3,000 acres at the foothills of the Yorkshire Dales, just outside Skipton. Broughton Hall itself was established in 1097 and has been home to the Tempest family for over 900 years. It is, in its own right, a house of transformation.

The Sanctuary is also home to one of Britain's most significant nature recovery projects: an extensive tree-planting and rewilding programme, with beavers reintroduced in 2025 alongside native cattle and Iron Age pigs.

At the centre of the grounds is Avalon, the Sanctuary's retreat centre, with a 20-metre pool, steam room, sauna, and hydromassage pool. Beyond the building: a meditation labyrinth, wild swimming reservoirs, and a cosmic garden. This is land that has been tended with real intention, and it shows.