I
’ve done some funny old things for this column, but on the first day of a Samurai Wisdom retreat, prancing about the Yorkshire moors in martial arts cosplay with a wooden sword strapped to my left hip, I experience a not insignificant WTF moment.
The retreat is at Broughton Sanctuary — the 900-year-old estate that has been reimagined by the 32nd-generation custodian Roger Tempest and his wife Paris, who inherited a down-at-heel place with a roof holier than Swiss cheese and heating that involved taking a couple of dogs to bed.
Today the roof is fixed, the water is piping hot and it’s a wellbeing hub with up to 1,000 visitors a day. The couple have established the Avalon spa and wellness space, overseen a busy yearly retreat programme and done significant rewilding. More than 500,000 trees have been planted, Iron-age pigs have been employed to naturally cultivate the land, and beavers have been reintroduced to the waterways.
Amid all this the Tempests have taken in Zen Takai, a 16th-generation samurai warrior. Traditionally, the role is passed from father to son, but Takai has no children. So he is on a quest to “spread samurai tradition all over the world and to connect the teachings with daily life in western culture”.
