Review: Grayshott Health regime

A typical lunch at Grayshott while on the digestive cleansing regime

We were a mixed bunch gathered at Grayshott spa in Surrey on a sunny winter morning – 16 of us in total, ages ranging from 30s to 80s, all female apart from one man with his wife.

The conspicuous blue rubber bands around our wrists marked us out as a ‘special group’ – not exactly ‘nil by mouth’, but we faced a week of challenging food restrictions as willing participants on the spa’s ‘digestive cleansing’ regime.

The premise of the Grayshott programme is quite simple – if your gut is not working, then neither will anything else. As the Grayshott team state: “Get your digestion in good shape and all other systems in your body can restore, cleanse, and balance.”

Sounds great. Now what do I actually get to eat??

Warming winter immunity soup

A delicious, immune-boosting winter soup

There’s really only one sensible thing to do when the weather starts to turn chilly – raid your fridge and your kitchen cupboard, find a big pot and get cooking some soup!

It’s one of the things I really love about winter – pouring over a hot steaming bowl of aromatic liquid chock full of fresh veggies (and some succulent pieces of chicken or fish if that’s your preference).

This recipe is based on ingredients I almost always have in my kitchen (yes, even the cavalo nero has become a staple now that I can regularly find it in my nearby supermarket) and they all have great immune boosting powers.

There was a time when I used to pride myself on my healthy immune system. Winters would come and go and the people around me would be reduced to red-nosed, sneezing wrecks as those pesky winter flu bugs took a hold, while I’d sail through the winter months snivel-free and blissfully unscathed.