A Wild Weekend in Somerset

Jane Egginton visits 42 Acres (www.42acres.com), a unique regenerative Estate, Nature Reserve & Wellbeing Retreat Centre in January. As well as encountering joy, inspiration and calm, she has a whole range of wild experiences.

As a travel and wellbeing writer from Somerset, I have wanted to visit 42 Acres since it opened ten years ago. The estate and I are now in a very different place. 42 Acres has grown to 173 acres and I now continue to travel deeply but rarely leave my home county.

‘The quality of nature is stillness and listening and it is so important to cultivate this in ourselves as a way in. So much of what we do is about taking’, we are told by the mushroom ambassador on our Medicinal Mushroom Retreat. I am moved and enriched by what I found on the one of the Wild Weekends. I arrive distracted and distressed and leave feeling connected and calm.

We begin with a gentle fireside Qui Gong and by the time we leave we are all vowing to have more slow weekends. The promise to connect with nature, self and others is fulfilled and the experience feels a bit like Christmas with nourishing food, no booze and an alternative family. The welcome from 42 Acres feels real and huge, with the commitment to connect with deepest intuition and ancient knowledge to create regeneration and transformation.

The huge sprawl of the land is detailed on a map, which looks like something from a fairy tale. Delightful illustrations of the much-loved wildlife include an owl sitting next to the Hermitage, with a cormorant, beaver and stork lakeside. Deer, fox and boar are pictured roaming the ancient woodland, there’s a fairy lit wood-fired sauna and a micro mushroom farm at its heart. The man made walled garden, wild kitchen and tiny boat (where guests can stay) are absorbed into the land; the wildlife are the main characters here.

We wander, childlike, enchanted by tales of the beavers’ industry, an introduction to an ancient oak known as ‘Grandmother Tree’, punctuated with delicious foraging of sea buckthorn, nuts and goodies in the edible hedges. Listening to the land, singing to the trees, we hardly realise we are also being educated. ‘It is thanks to all your ancestors being able to forage that you are alive today’, we are told, along with the staggering statistic that 99.9% of mushrooms we eat in the UK are grown indoors.

The work here goes deep. We actively participate in an ancient practice of mushroom growing, learn that this land is home to millions of lives and are told that once extinct beavers, as well as wild storks and wild cats have been brought back to this place. When you not only witness, but actually experience and feel in an embodied sense, deep care and love for nature, the sense of nurture, nourishment and restoration seems inevitable. It is so easy to forget that we are nature too and all in desperate need of being rewilded, which is what happens on these weekends, gently, powerfully.  What happened was a subtle quietening in us all that is perhaps best described as Grace.

‘I am so delighted you are all here’, exclaims Brid on arrival, and it feels true.  ‘Welcome home’, she says at the fireside and invites us to join in a meditation on Love, not as a concept but as a feeling in the body. It is so moving that I am in tears, and I am not the only one. We are kindly invited to share our intentions, which range from inspiration and joy to calm. On leaving, we feel so much more.

Upcoming Wild Weekend Retreats at 42 Acres include:

Listening to the Land with Marian Boswall in March 2026

Medicinal Mushrooms with Tasha Stevens-Vallecillo in November 2026

Wintering Well with Tasha Stevens-Vallecillo in January 2027