Day 3 - Wednesday

Dear DD,

Once again I woke feeling surprisingly fresh and awake, and looking forward to my day of juices. Whilst sipping my lemon tea and watching GMTV however, I remembered my dream which consisted of me swimming in a bowl of chips covered in Marie Rose sauce. Whilst I may consciously not be craving that much food, I think my sub conscience is different!

First up was a Yoga class from Gail. No, not step granny Gail, but a new Gail, who comes in to teach Yoga. Gail bought with her three bags of different smelling Chai balls and kindly let us choose which smelling one we wanted. I went for dandelion and mum went for cinnamon, as did most people, but no one went for daffodil which amusingly annoyed Gail ("but that's the best one!"). I almost felt I should swap to please her, but decided to stand my ground. We then proceeded with the Yoga moves, which all in all were a lot of talk about nothing. Gail spent so long telling us how to salute the sun and how to turn our dog down that we only ever really got five minutes to do it. Thankfully for me, the excess gas is catching up with most people now, as we nearly all discovered when going in for the stretch. There's no shame between fellow detoxers.

After Gail waved us on our Detox way (but not before she got in another Detox Joke... "I'm off to the pub for lunch!") we downed a juice then embarked on a 10 minute session of bouncing. 10 people. 10 trampetes. One Bouncing DVD, and off you go. Dylan (the virtual bouncing instructor) put us through our paces by teaching us ten moves in a bounce routine. Each move lasts for 15 to 20 seconds or so, and every new move you learn you have to go back to the beginning and do them all in order, all over again. As a result, you are continually bouncing on this tiny bloody trampet in all different shapes, sizes and styles for what seems like forever. I've never sweat so much or seen so many other people sweat so much, and as for poor old Maureen (told her husband she was at a Bridge club), three moves in to the routine she bounced an inch too far to the left and ended up landing in a pile of inflatable exercise balls.

All bounced out we took it in turns to hang upside down and sweat some more in the sauna, then I teamed up with Gail (yes, my favourite one this time) to have a personal training session. I think I needed to prove to Matt, the trainer, that just because I was on an almost all female detox retreat I wasn't to be outdone by him, so I spent my hour pushing and pumping to new extremes, and seriously regretting it later. Meanwhile Gail clearly wanted to prove to Matt that she was a step GILF (like MILF but Granny led…) as she followed every single exertion of her body with a 'ohh! Matt!' type expression. She also hilariously kept answering his question with exactly what he didn't want to hear, such as this:

Gail: I really want to lose my bingo wings
Matt: Well, you know how you can do that
Gail: Yes. Have lipo suction.
Matt: NO!

She was being deadly serious as well.

After my yummy lunch of... juice, I settled down to sleep in the garden, and was woken to be told that it was juice time again. I felt like a baby, napping between liquid meals. However, this wasn't a liquid meal!!! Well, almost. After our juices, Herman, the Dutch creator of this Detox place who is one of the countries leading raw food chefs (which apparently means more than making salads) whipped out A BISCUIT! Yes, a biscuit. Albeit, one of his Detox Biscuits, made from the left over pulp of the vegetables that have been juiced for our drinks, then slow baked at 60 degrees to remove all remaining moisture and moulded together. Sounds a bit gross, but as the first solid in three days it tasted like caviar.

More sun followed before an Aqua detox, which is where you stick your feet in to a bowl until the water turns brown. This is apparently due to the electrode reaction that is transmitting with your blood cells, and the browner it goes the more detoxed you are. For all I know, however, they could have slipped in a sachet of Nesquick for dramatic effect.

After out broth Judy emerged for the first time from her colonic room (that's six people's bottoms she's sucked out today) to invite us to her weekly meditation class. Intrigued / excited / or just plain defeated by whatever they throw at us next, we all trudged into the lounge to sit down to a room of tranquillity and calm. Willy would have most definitely been at home there were that many bloody whale noises going off. She began by getting us to close our eyes, and then asked us to think of every bone and muscle in our body, which she talked us through. She refused to say the word bottom though, and used its Latin name instead. Prude. All was going well: I was standing in the metaphorical river casting aside the burden of my life, trying to catch the fish of hope and happiness, when poor old Maureen, having just about recovered from her bouncing incident, let of the loudest snore possible. Not quite big enough to wake her mind, and being against Judy's beliefs to disturb someone mid meditation we had to just leave her, snoring away in the middle of the group. She only bloody woke up when the titles to PS I Love You started rolling. I think she was quite embarrassed, bless her.

9 juices and two broths to go…

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