Lost weekend

Last night I dreamt about the plaice and chips from the Blue Gardenia pub in Co Wicklow and the sticky toffee pudding from Itsa4 in Sandymount. Excuse the culinary chat but it's all quinoa masquerading as porridge for breakfast and lentil soup for lunch round these parts. Not that I expected a carb-fest at bootcamp, but a cut of brown bread with the ould lentils wouldn't have gone astray.

I had to go and have a lie down after reading the schedule sent by the fiendish minds behind this gruelling detox weekend: two hours of yoga in the morning, followed by a three-hour hike, then a lap of the grounds and then something called resistance training, which I was sure I was going to resist. This was followed by two hours of Pilates, another couple of hours of yoga, then bed. Every day for three days.

On our arrival at the beautiful Kippure Estate they checked our bags to see if we had sneaked in food. They even warned against "diva" behaviour.

A few days earlier I had taken a call from Bootcamp Mammy, Lisa Wilkinson from the Elbow Room yoga studio in Dublin. There would, she advised, be a "mildly famous" person at this, their first ever bootcamp, and would I mind respecting all participants' confidentiality? "Of course," I agreed. My promise to keep quiet didn't mean I couldn't speculate about who the "mildly famous" person might be.

The first person my driving companion and I thought of was Twink, although we weren't sure how happy she'd be about being described as merely "mildly famous". Kerry Katona was put on and then struck off the list because we reckoned she was properly famous and could create her own personal bootcamp in her back garden if she so desired. Other people we thought fell into the mildly famous person (MFP) category included: Mary O'Rourke, Miriam Ahern and Anne Doyle.

I can't tell you who the MFP turned out to be but it was none of the above. "Mildly famous," turned out to be a pretty accurate description of the MFP who was more thinking person's crumpet than top television totty. I came to know the mystery guest quite well when a small group of us got lost on a mountain for a few hours on the first three-hour hike. We took our cue from the March of the Penguins movie and huddled together in the wet gorse for warmth while waiting for a helicopter which never came.

Ably led by Bootcamp Mammy, we took shelter from the mist and wind and rain under fir trees, trekked several kilometres into the unknown, climbed over a barbed wire fence into someone's field and reached a main road where we were picked up by the search party. At one point during the mini-ordeal we sang the Rolf Harris classic Two Little Boys to keep our spirits up. The MFP knew all the words.

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Sorry for the stray asterisk, but I had to break off from my bootcamp diary to go for lunch, which was an improvement on last night's salad - Asian broth with tofu. Still no sign of any bread. I'm aching at this stage, pretty much all over. My condition would be even worse though if I hadn't accidentally lost the group while we were jogging around the grounds. I did jog for a couple of minutes, before surreptitiously diverting from the gang to skip down the hill to my room.

After lunch we were given a talk by a man in a rainbow jumper who had built a sweatlodge for us in the grounds of the estate. A sweatlodge is essentially an outdoor spiritual sauna where the steam comes from red hot stones. The chanting, drumming and the animal noises that are all part of the sweatlodge experience can give some people a powerful emotional release. But, to be honest, after Silver Birch - that's his Shaman name - spoke, I felt a bit nervous about the whole thing.

I got a bit cross when he announced that menstruating women were banned from the lodge. Apparently our psychic abilities are heightened during what he called our "moontime", and this could be potentially dangerous in a sacred space where people have been known to have visions and face their fears and revert to childhood.

I couldn't help wondering whether the "moontime" ban was connected to those beliefs going back centuries which are still, sadly, perpetuated among some religious and spiritual traditions. The bible for example - Leviticus 15:19-33 - goes into great detail about how menstruating women are "unclean". But, that conundrum aside, I personally think the "moontime" ban is badly timed. I can be irritable when I am mooning but it's usually during PMT (pre-moontime) that I go totally psycho. At the risk of sounding like a diva: bring me my weight in sticky toffee pudding or I swear the MFP gets it.

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The sweatlodge was an experience none of us will forget. I can confirm that animal noises were made by some of the ladies and gentlemen (you know who you are) and a full review of the event will appear on these pages next week.

On the final day of bootcamp, we were given a form to fill in, asking for our low and highlights. The worst moments for me were the weigh-in, obviously, followed closely by the whole getting lost on a mountain part. The best bit was the weigh-out. I had lost seven pounds. The bootcamp motto is, after all, "pure punishment, pure reward". And the other good news is I reckon it should only be a couple of weeks before I can walk properly again.

For more information on bootcamps call 01-6779859 or visit www.the-elbowroom.com