Soulstice Immersions are two-week, women-only experiences, designed to help us come home to ourselves - through courage, creativity and connection. The quiet clarity that emerges when life finally gives us space to breathe. We created Soulstice because so many of us women reach a moment in our lives where we feel ready for something more, but aren’t sure what “more” looks like. Perhaps the chance to tell the story of "us", with our whole heart. Maybe to explore the willingnes

Once a simple word for a regular townsfellow, the term " bourgeois" has travelled through centuries of revolution, ridicule, and refinement. Its journey from common noun to common mirror, reflects our own uneasy juggle with progress and social aspiration. It is neither really a word of belonging, but perhaps more one that suggests "becoming". The hapless work of the sausage roll that wants to be a "Pork Wellington". Long before bourgeois became a petty insult, it was a mar

A note on some feelings which recently surfaced, when Vanessa and I ran into a couple we hadn't seen for a while, and what began as a pleasant enough conversational exchange, soon had us on the back foot, in a sort of panicked display of what can only be described as "anxious over-explaining". It was very aparent that this was a central tenet to our personal sense of being in the right place. If our sense of belonging relates to the emotional landscape of moving to France, t

French supermarkets at Christmas-time are irresistibly mesmerising. Perhaps it’s the seasonal theatre of it all - quarries of oysters; gentlemanly rows of sincere-looking Champagnes, serious wines that require a quick chat before being chosen. Stockpiles of chocolate logs arranged like artillary ordanance. Or maybe it’s simply the Star Wars scale of the Hypermarché itself, which in December feels less like a shop and more like an obstacle course in Oz. "It's ok, I've got thi

"We have two ears and one mouth, so we can listen twice as much as we speak". - Eptictetus. -

"Labeling makes the invisible visible, but it’s limiting. Categories are the enemy of connecting."

It is all well and good to throw buzz-words around, but one that often comes up in casual conversation these days, is ‘frequency’. Like most expressions, it can mean different things to different people and yet actually, is very rooted in science. Not in a “my frequency is like..so off today” as though you‘re just having a bad hair day, but involving physics…a real exchange of energy with the environment and people - total friends or total strangers. We’ve all been in a room

This month, rather than a focus on food and what makes our table groan, we feel a bit caught up in remebrance. Of course that in itself is quite fitting for November. It is a month roomy with retrospection, governed for most of us through the memorial of the 11th hour of the 11th day, to the waste they called "Great War". Mexico celebrates grief through continuity on the día de los muertos and the left-footers of Europe do their own version of their very best, on All Saints

Every nation tends to make a contribution to the great theatre of style. England gave us understatement, Italy provided road rage and France — with predictable irony — gave us austerity disguised as art. The word silhouette began not as a term of beauty, but of mockery. Étienne de Silhouette, was the well intentioned but disastrously unpopular 1759 French finance minister. He tried very hard tried to balance the Nations chequebook after yet another costly skirmish with the E

Self-talk is not something to be taken lightly. Saying things like “I can’t carry a tune, I’m tone deaf.” whilst it can be an expression of mock humility maybe it is true... for now. How do you know? What if saying this is why you haven't become better? Sing because you love to. If all people thought they had to be perfect in order to love something or try something, we'd all be sunk. What I wanted to say has nothing to do with singing, or maybe it has everything to do with

Platform 13 CEO Vanessa Grant sits down with the a local artisan who shares her story of creativity and community.

Our Brave Seeds "Women of Note" posts were originally conceived around a focus on the women who shape our regional community - social and entrepeneurial movers and shakers, whose gifts of giving back are, well... noteworthy. This month however, we are choosing not to wait until November's newsletter is published, but to live in the present moment of a great loss. To remember Dame Jane Goodall, who left us peacefully, just yesterday. Her life was a quiet revolution, rooted in

I love almost everything that is old. Old books, old times, old manners. One of the few enviable advantages of being British lies not only in how we have managed to preserve old things, but in how we continue to delight in them. We don’t simply store the past; we keep it in circulation, like a favourite chair, endlessly sat in. Old things come to us already whispering their stories. They carry tattered handling and loved history at their core, stories ready to be un-boxed, re

There was a time when a social visit began not with a text message or a hopeful knock, but with a small, stiff rectangle. The calling card was both introduction and safeguard — a way to say, “I was here,” without barging into someone’s day. It was etiquette in miniature, a pocket-sized handshake. Each card bore its owner’s name, sometimes a flourish of script or a modest emblem. One might slip it onto a silver tray in the hallway, where a family’s social geography was quietly

“Travel whispers to the soul’s boldness. It asks not for the absence of fear, but the courage to lead into the unknown, to embrace both the journey and the self that is discovered along the way”.                      Attributed to Mark Twain                       Every step beyond what is familiar is an invitation to growth. We do not travel to coll

Platform 13 CEO Vanessa Grant on Soul, Strength and the Sacred Feminine.

Perhaps the greatest barrier to worthwhile communication is that we no longer listen to understand. We listen only to reply. Our ears twitch, our tongues prepare their retorts, and before the sentence has even ended, we are already halfway into our counterpoint. What passes for dialogue is often little more than a polite duel to get one’s point across and be heard. But what if listening was something else? If we approached each other’s words with kinder curiosity, the intent

Look out this month (around the weekend of Sepetmber 13/14) for France's European Heritage Day events ("Journées de Patrimoine") A nationwide event where historic sites, museums, monuments, and even private estates open their doors — often with free entry or special discounts. Here are 3 on Platform 13’s Not to Miss list; with drive times from our Estate. Abbaye de Chancelade (Dordogne) Founded in the 12th century, this serene abbey just outside Périgueux opens its cloisters

If you ever thought wood and clay had nothing in common, Stéphane Miglierina would like a quiet word. From his workshop in Monpazier, he takes the humble tree and the stubborn lump of clay and persuades them into a marriage so harmonious you’d think they’d been courting for centuries. His secret weapon? Raku firing. It’s a process that makes clay crackle with character, like fine laugh lines on a well-loved face. Then Stéphane pairs it with wood — walnut, cherry, whatever spe