What to Expect

Land of Joy is a truly wonderful place to spend time learning, practicing and contemplating. All those who worked incredibly hard to establish and develop the centre have created somewhere extremely special which is continuing to thrive and grow.

The onsite team are fully dedicated to ensuring those who visit have a beneficial and meaningful stay, while those who visit each leave their own imprint on the place, contributing to the incredibly peaceful and powerful atmosphere that exists here.

We are reasonably remote, with open vistas across the rolling hills of the Northumberland National Park. Our land stretches through beautiful and varied woodland where two lakes, a more ‘formal’ garden and a river can be discovered during relaxing walks that can be taken between retreat sessions helping to open the mind.

Inside Land of Joy

This video takes you on a tour of the inside of Land of Joy

Our Outbuildings & Grounds

This video takes you on a tour of Land of Joy grounds

Accommodation

With limited space, our accommodation is currently mostly limited to comfortable shared rooms, including some twin rooms. Single room accommodation is rarely available and is allocated on need according to need.

Please see our accommodation page for more information.

Food

We provide a varied vegetarian diet, but can cater for gluten-free, dairy-free and vegan options, with advance notice.

Retreats

We have a beautiful and peaceful gompa (meditation room) which holds a maximum of 25 people and is currently our only practice space with all retreats taking place there.

If you apply to attend a retreat here we will do our best to provide all the information you require for your stay with us but please be aware the retreat schedules are sometimes prepared quite close to the time, while decisions about periods of silence to be kept during the retreats are made by the retreat leader and are sometimes very last minute.

Your Arrival

As we often only have a few days to clean everything between retreats we ask people to please arrive on the day your retreat starts if attending shorter retreats of up to two week unless you will be travelling all day to reach us, in which case arriving a day early is no problem. If you plan to do so please let us know so we make sure we prepare meals for you. If you are attending a longer retreat (more than two weeks) and feel you would like to settle in before it begins you are welcome to arrive one or two days before the retreat starts, but again, please let us know you will be doing so.

If you apply to attend a retreat here we will do our best to provide all the information you require for your stay with us but please be aware the retreat schedules are sometimes prepared quite close to the time, while decisions about periods of silence to be kept during the retreats are made by the retreat leader and are sometimes very last minute.

What to Bring

We recommend bringing warm clothes for most of the year as the weather can be very unpredictable at times! If you’re keen to go for walks, are coming before June or if there has been a wet spell before your arrival we highly recommend bringing outdoor shoes/wellies and waterproof coats if you wish to go outside in the grounds and beyond. Indoor shoes/slippers can also be useful for inside the house.

Land of Joy provides bedding, towels and a meditation cushion or chair for the meditation room. If you are attending a retreat which lasts longer than two weeks you will also have access to our washing machine and dryer to do your laundry and wash bedding and towels.

A torch is also useful for use outdoors after dark.

Donations

Everything happening at Land of Joy is made possible through various forms of generosity. We believe in giving without any expectation of receiving anything in return and therefore do not charge for teachings, accommodation or food.

We invite those attending to donate whatever they would like, or can afford, to give. All donations help us cover our annual running costs of £90,000, enabling the centre to remain open for others to enjoy in the future.

This can be done in the following ways:

  1. Via the donation forms shared via the retreat information email before the retreat starts.

  2. By card while at Land of Joy

  3. By online bank transfer either before or after visiting Land of Joy

Please remember you can add a massive 25% to your donation if you are eligible for Gift Aid (a UK tax payer). It’s as simple as completing a form while you are with us and we make the claim on your behalf.

Teachers, retreat leaders and volunteers practice generosity by freely offering their time to Land of Joy, meaning we do not pay them for the time they offer Land of Joy . We therefore also invite those attending retreats and courses to make an offering directly to the teacher via the online donation forms shared before the retreats and to the volunteers in cash whilst at Land of Joy.

To learn more about the generosity model please click here

We hope you’re soon able to come and discover Land of Joy for yourself!