Summer is here and our thoughts turn to relaxing and rejuvenating retreats. A week or even a few days of yoga, meditation, massages, delicious vegetarian or vegan fare, all in a serene environment can do wonders for the mind, body and soul!

Neal’s Yard Holidays has a wide selection of summer retreat offers in rural settings such as quintessential English countryside and balmy island idylls – for more on this please see our recent blog on rural retreats. Walk in the woods and meadows, meditate under the stars or sun and just enjoy the summer.

Availability ranges from early July to late September so, go on, take your pick from some of the best summer retreat offers below:

UK

Find Your Passion

Find Your Passion, Raw Horizons’ women-only retreat offers a holistic combination of wellbeing coaching, Kundalini yoga, meditation and detoxifying raw food. Stay at Split Farthing Hall, a restored Georgian mansion near the Yorkshire Dales with infrared sauna and an outside hot tub.

Three nights from £625pp full board twin share (single £745pp) including yoga, retreat activities, hot tub and infrared sauna, transfers to/from the local train station. Available for selected dates throughout the year including 3-6 July and 11-14 September 2018.

OFFER: Mention Neal’s Yard Holidays to receive a complimentary one-hour massage worth £55.

Shamanic healing, spiritual detox retreat

Stay in a spacious country house in Dartmoor, Devon set within its own idyllic grounds, surrounded by woodland, rivers, waterfalls, and sacred sites.
Aluna Healing Retreats provide a healing environment to detox and transform through organic juices, ancient shamanic wisdom, nature connection, sound healing, breath work, meditation and yoga practice.

Six nights from £820pp twin share or double room, or single room for £980pp. The price includes fresh juices, all classes and also activities.
Available from 6 to 12 July 2018.

OFFER: Mention Neal’s Yard Holidays and receive £50 off the retreat.

Yoga retreat: life coaching and love yourself

Chillout Retreats’ base near Arundel, close to the rolling Sussex Downs, combines a luxurious style with barn conversion and Temple Spa products in all bathrooms and an indoor swimming pool with mixed ability hatha yoga classes, core strengthening Pilates, meditation and guided walks. Summer Time Bliss adds life coaching and a Love Yourself workshop. Disabled access.

Two-night weekend retreat from £325pp twin share with shared bathroom. Or £350pp twin room with private bathroom, or single room with private bathroom from £450pp, including full board and activities.
Summer Time Bliss available from 20-22 July 2018.

OFFER: Mention Neal’s Yard Holidays to receive a free 30-minute holistic treatment worth £30.

FRANCE

Hiking and Yoga

Here the biggest of our summer retreat offers with £100 off. AdventureYogi combines adult-only yoga retreats with adventure activities in the French Alps. Stay in a luxurious chalet in the area of Sainte Foy Tarentaise with blissful mountain views. Yoga twice a day, guided hikes, brunch and dinner, sauna, hot tub and on-site massages.

Seven nights from £989pp sharing deluxe twin/double en-suite (deluxe single from £1294pp) including twice daily yoga classes, daily CHK brunch, vegetarian feast and local wine in the evening, two guided hikes and packed lunches, sauna and hot tub and transfers.
Available from 18 July to 29 August 2018.

OFFER: £100 off one-week retreats starting between 18 July and 15 August 2018.

ITALY

Hatha Yoga and mindfulness

Galanias Retreats near Bari Sardo in Sardinia provide a unique boutique hotel with an outdoor pool with waterfall, fresh Mediterranean cuisine in a tranquil countryside, not far from Torre di Bari Beach. The relaxing week offers hatha yoga, yoga nidra, mindfulness and pranayama.

Seven nights from €2,045 (approx £1,725) based on two people sharing a room (single from €1,360, approx £1,115) half board including five days of hatha yoga, mindfulness and yoga nidra classes. Lunches, alcohol, flights, transfers, optional excursions are extra. Available now until early October.

OFFER: Mention Neal’s Yard Holidays to receive 20% discount on massage treatments.

See also our budget and affordable retreats.

Wishing you happy, healthy holidays with one of our summer retreat offers!

Jo Fernandez is a leading UK travel journalist, with much of her career spent working for the London Evening Standard where she was Travel Editor until 2015. Now a freelance travel journalist and copywriter, she lives in Essex and has one daughter. As a travel expert, she still enjoys jetting off to write travel pieces, with favourite destinations including Mexico, Croatia and, of course, Essex.

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When you’re planning your next spring or summer holidays, you’ll want to make sure you get the best deal on flights. But how far in advance should you book your plane ticket?

Skyscanner and CheapAir analysed over 200 million flights over three years and came up with a formula that lets you know the answer to the question we all like to know:
When is the optimum time to book my flights?

The formula for cheap air tickets

According to the research, the optimum ‘window’ for bagging cheap air tickets is from 29 days – 104 days before date of departure.

The research shows that the cheapest time to book flights in advance from the UK is as follows:

Spain – 5 weeks
USA – 21 weeks
Italy – 6 weeks
France – 6 weeks
Greece – 3 weeks
Turkey – 13 weeks
Portugal – 5 weeks
Germany – 9 weeks
Cyprus – 4 weeks
Croatia – 6 weeks

However, air fares can fluctuate and so it’s advisable to sign up for price alerts so you know when the lower prices become available. Nonetheless the research is interesting and we decided to try it ourselves.

We searched for a flight from London to Athens (Greece) departing less than a week from the time of writing, returning in 7 days, and the cheapest direct flight returned was £95. We did the same search but for the optimum 3 weeks in advance of departure, again returning in one week, and the cheapest direct flight, albeit with a different airline, was £68. We decided to increase the time from 3 weeks to 5 weeks and found that the cheapest direct flight was cheaper still at £61.

But then we searched for a direct flight from London to Malaga (Spain), again, less than a week before departure, and the cheapest flight was £59. We searched again for a flight 5 weeks in advance and the cheapest flight returned was £45. Searching 8 weeks in advance however, returned a cheapest flight of £64, so the price had gone up again after the recommended 5 weeks in advance.

We think this formula works although you could probably push the number of weeks in advance like we did with our Athens trip. Yet be aware of holidays such as Christmas or Easter, because flights will always be more expensive around those times. So it’s worth double checking latest prices around the optimum time and earlier.

Here’s another crucial tip. After searching for flights online do clear your ‘cookies’. – According to the Telegraph newspaper, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest companies keep a record of your flight searches and push up prices the more you search to pressure you into buying before prices “rise” further. So if you search for a flight more than a couple of times in a week you could be targeted. To avoid this, clear your browser cookies after each search – or turn on anonymous browsing.

Now you’ll have the best chance to find cheap air tickets with this knowledge.

With this in mind you may like to plan your next yoga retreat and spring or summer holiday in good time.

To find out how to get cheap train tickets, see our previous blog here.

Happy holidays!

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