With great enthusiasm, I put the essence of who I am, and everything I have experienced that makes me who I am, into my retreats, courses, and books.
Dr Margaretha Montagu @ Esprit Meraki Retreats
Living my best Life in the southwest of France
After working for 20 years as a medical doctor in a variety of specialities, including psychiatry and general practice, I now live on a small farm in the rolling countryside of southwest France, in an ancient half-timbered farmhouse that has clearly seen several centuries of interesting human decisions. These days my little farm is home to a handful of horses, who occasionally look mildly curious about your life choices, a great deal of peaceful silence, and guests who arrive feeling slightly overworked and leave wondering why they don’t live like this all the time.
I host small retreats here for people who want to recharge their batteries and spend a few days reconnecting with nature. Guests walk short, breathtakingly beautiful sections of the Camino de Santiago that wind through this spectacular region of Gascony, then return to the farmhouse for generous Gascon meals and the kind of quiet evenings that modern life rarely provides. I simply provide the setting: the ancient paths, the countryside, and the famously excellent Gascon cuisine, and the horses occasionally supervise the day’s activities with great seriousness.
When people ask me what I do when I’m not hosting retreats, in the winter months, I tell them that I’m a cartographer, a map maker, a path lighter, a get-through-a-crisis guide. I help people manage stress, rewrite their life stories, and start new chapters, especially people struggling to find their way through life transitions like career changes, starting new businesses, moving to different countries, getting divorced, losing loved ones, and coping with empty nests, debilitating illnesses, retirement – any substantial change – planned or unplanned – in their circumstances.
I’ve been there. I understand how challenging life transitions can be, especially transition pile-ups, both personally and professionally. I know what it feels like—the uncertainty, the insecurity, the overthinking, the gut-wrenching fear. In the last 30 years, I have been through several pile-ups, I can’t say it has gotten any easier, but I got better at regulating my nervous system, with the steadfast support of my friends and my horses.
Because I’m someone who’s been through a few storms myself, I now help others become less at the mercy of their emotions, more capable of dealing with life’s inevitable difficulties, and increasingly able to enjoy the life they actually have: More Information
About Dr Margaretha Montagu (MBChB, MRCGP, NLP master pract (cert), Transformational Life Coach (dip), Life Story Coach (cert), Counselling (cert), LCCH Med Hyp Dip and EAGALA (cert)
There’s a lot magic and inspiration in your own story and what you do, your love of your animal children especially, I hope you know that impacts people in the same way the film has. I felt you and this experience brought me peace and light, when I’ve been stuck in sadness and in a fog. So thank you! Maybe life may change but there will always be something better on the other side, the fear is worse than the actual thing, with this trip I felt that with that last day in Camino especially! I hope you continue to have courage for yourself as you help others with their own…Christina P 2025
Online Action – Meet me at…
Living here in deepest rural France is pure bliss, but one has to be careful not to become too isolated. Social media is my connection to the world beyond all these glorious sunflower fields, vineyards and woods. When I researched books, I collected a considerable number of quotes, articles and blog posts that I share on Instagram. Still, my favourite social media haunt is LinkedIn. I’d love to connect there. My Amazon Author Page and Goodreads Author Page.
If you decide to come to one of my potentially life-changing retreats, don’t forget your fur coat, your highest heels and your tiara! If it sounds as if I have lost the plot, click here.
There is one more thing I want you to know.
Despite all my experience, knowledge and qualifications, I am no different from you. I am far from perfect. I do not always practise what I preach. I do not have the answers to all my questions, and I do not have the solutions to all my problems. Like you, I sometimes feel confused and overwhelmed. I am, however, convinced that mindfulness, gratitude and generosity can make a massive difference in your life.
- Interview with Melissa Volpi
- Interview with Hélène T. Stelian downloadable pdf
- Interview with Liz Boulter from the Guardian Newspaper(UK) See below
- Featured in Cathy Pacific Magazine downloadable pdf
One of my favourite Quotes
“No matter how many scars we carry from what we have gone through and suffered in the past, our intrinsic wholeness is still here: what else contains the scars? None of us has to be a helpless victim of what was done to us or what was not done for us in the past, nor do we have to be helpless in the face of what we may be suffering now. We are also what was present before the scarring—our original wholeness, what was born whole. And we can reconnect with that intrinsic wholeness at any time because its very nature is that it is always present. It is who we truly are.” Jon Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living
Ready for a retreat? Do you dream of escaping your stressful life to raise a herd of goats or grow sunflowers in the south of France? Then you may be ready for an Esprit Meraki retreat. Get access to this “very serious” quiz to help you figure out how urgent your need for a change of scenery is when you subscribe to my monthly newsletter.