This one’s for Nici and for anyone wondering about ‘Remote Roots’. If that’s not you, feel free to bugger off.

I can tell you easily enough that Remote Roots is a co-living, co-working experience, where you join a collection of interesting strangers in some beautiful remote location, where you cook and laugh and learn and work together. 

That’s what Remote Roots is. I can also say Remote Roots was different for everyone who joined. It was an escape, a holiday, a retreat, a refresh, something totally new, a continuation of something from before, an opportunity, a break, and or just another week in a life as a digital nomad.

It is good, it was great, and the organiser Nici could do a better job than I of telling you about it, but I’ll try anyway, the only way I know how: through song, through blog …

Most everyone arrived, staggered throughout the day, by 6pm on the Saturday. People had flown in from across Europe and made their trundling, publicly transported way to be picked up by strangers in hire cars at the airport. Folks were happy enough to meet on route and find their way together and get started with the cautious, somewhat awkward small talk, the‘hi nice to meet you’-s. 

But small talk became big talk quite quickly. We arrived at the house and had a nose around, but as soon as we were assembled we gathered in the ‘yoga studio’ (that had a proper name which I have already quite forgotten, it sounded like ‘shower’ I think) and we sat in a circle on yoga mats and got the run down.

We talked about admin stuff, house rules, working times, suggestions for communal living, and then the fun stuff; things we’d like to do, workshops people wanted to run, and an introduction to Sophie in the form of chakra card reading.

I have known and love a handful of hippies in my life, and I’m not much of one myself, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the light touch aspect of spirituality going on. Much more and I would wonder what I’d stumbled into, much less and it wouldn’t have been enough to mean anything. But what I think made it so good, and so welcoming, was the earnestness and openness with which the ideas and practice was shared.

For example we talked about why we were all there, what intention we had for joining Remote Roots and what we wanted to get out of it by the end of the week. Everyone shared honestly and it went a long way to breaking down walls. The cards Sophie gave out at the very least acted as conversation starters, and in some cases as portents of what was to come. Good stuff. 

We ate some lovely home made food (like almost every night following), retired to a communal sitting area to get to know each other and eventually retreated off to bed in shared dorm-like rooms. Everyone was tired from travelling and I think anticipating the hiking and hours of socialising we’d planned for the next day so we called it relatively early, but I don’t think anyone felt uneasy or unwelcome or uncomfortable.

By the end of the first day, which is to say after the first few hours being with everyone, I at least was very at ease and glad to see what came next.

Okay, if I were to describe everyday this post would be far too long and I think maybe three people would ever read the whole thing, so let’s break it into sections I think prospective joiners might be interested in.

Food

Starting of course with the most important part of any trip. Food. Ahead of arrival we were all searched through the medium of WhatsApp for dietary requirements and allergies. Almost everyday several people popped to the shops to stock up on supplies, groceries, and really an obscene amount of water. Everything from the shopping trips, to the cooking, to the eating was shared and enjoyed. 

On the nights we didn’t go out for food a team of two or three people would cook something up, and most mornings someone would be at the breakfast station chopping and serving and cooking up. Over the 7 days we had Spanish tortilla, daal, sea food pasta, an avocado chicken in bread thing I can’t remember the proper name of, lots of left overs, something else I’m forgetting, and each morning a tremendous amount of bagels, eggs, onions, bananas and granola would make their way down people’s throats. 

Cooking and eating together is, in my opinion, a great way to feel closer to someone. Each time we cooked we talked, when we ate we laughed, and while others were cleaning up, we were grateful. 

Working

This was indeed a co-working experience, and most people, unlike me, had jobs to do. I asked a handful of people on the last days if they felt like they got a lot of work done, if they had managed to be productive sitting in the 24 degrees sun with yoga, and food, and other people as distractions near by. And resoundingly, yes. I don’t think anyone was the most productive they’ve ever been, but folks got their work done. 

Every week day we’d rise, probably do an hour of yoga led by Sophie, and then filter off to our ‘offices’ for the day. Either inside with crossed legs, to one of the little desks in the house, or like me, sat outside, in or near the sunshine listening for people to say ‘is that a fake background?!’.

Everyone was respectful of everyone else working and just got on with things. There isn’t much more to say. It worked. 

Each one teach one

Everyone was asked before joining if they’d like to run a workshop/session of some kind where they share some skill or experience with the group so we could all learn something from and about each other. This proved to be a fun way to interact and gave us solid landmarks to schedule days around. 

We didn’t have time to get through everyone’s but the ones we did were really good; a wee presentation about EU funding, a talk about high level rowing and an athlete’s mindset, a salsa class, creative writing, and I think I’m forgetting something else too. 

It all seemed like a master class in planning. That’s not to say everything was planned perfectly and ran like a well oiled machine, but it was run in such a way that everything ran smoothly, everything happened more or less when it was supposed to, and it seemed to all happen organically, as if there was no planning. Which in my mind means there was some cracking planning done.

Evenings

The evenings for me were the best part of the trip. The night came on, belly’s had been filled and everyone drifted to the sort of sitting area to sit around and just talk. The week started with everyone sitting around separately having small group or 1:1 conversations, and by the end everyone was lying around having big group discussions about their lives, their problems, and their experiences. 

It was by no means forced or even mandatory, a few people said very little at all and preferred to just listen to the stories being told, but it was a testament to how quickly everyone became comfortable being open with each other when we would sit down, get out a game which prompted personal stories, and went around the circle listening to each other. 

Activities

We were in Tenerife and we had three cars to ferry people around, we didn’t just sit in the house working and talking everyday. Some would have liked to do a little more, we didn’t go out out really at all and probably because folks were pretty pooped after a days work we didn’t do anything excessively exciting, but we did some good stuff.

We did two few hour long beautiful group hikes, some folks went solo and in smaller groups too, everyone took the Friday afternoon off to go to the beach and spend the day getting sandy, and playing spike ball, and drinking cocktails in the sun, and it wasn’t much of an excursion, but we drank a lot of wine and milled around the house a lot too. In retrospect I think more going out and doing things would have been good, but I also remember in the moment thinking, and someone who’s not big into getting hammered, all of this was just right.

The other big activity I’ve alluded to a few times in a couple of places, was the daily yoga practice, but I think I’m going to do a whole other post about that another time so I won’t go into it anymore here.

If you’re interested in hearing more about it please don’t reach out to me. Go to the Remote Roots website and find your way to Nici. If she ignores you just know you’re just not that interesting.

- Rhys