I visited the women’s-only summer camp that’s a hotter ticket than Taylor Swift

Camp Château has racked up a 13,000-strong waiting list. What makes this place so special?

The pilgrims ahead of us were on the Voie du Puy, part of the famous Camino de Santiago. I’d joined a pilgrimage of a more modern kind: to Camp Château – a women’s retreat in south-west France that’s now in its second year, and has been called a hotter ticket than Taylor Swift.
Women-only retreats offering community and fun are on the rise post-pandemic – a salve to loneliness, and a way to meet like-minded travellers – but Camp Château’s ascendance is exceptional. Many of my fellow guests had been lured by an Instagram reel of the camp that has 24 million plays on the platform; now, with a 13,000-strong waiting list for 2025, all seem stunned to be there.
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“When I was looking for a retreat to book, everything that popped up was yoga,” recalled Melissa Reyes, a social worker from Austen, Texas. “I love yoga, but I don’t want to make it my whole trip. I just needed a place where I could breathe and there were no expectations.” 
Camp revolves around “elective” activities, and that morning we were on a hike of the château’s surrounds in the Vallée du Célé (“Paradise Valley”), known for its quaint villages and troglodyte dwellings. Ancient lavoirs (washing places) and slender paths lined with chestnut trees gave way to fields of sunflowers and sky-blue borage. “It just feels so out of time,” enthused Sylvie Hanks, from Orange County. “We don’t have anything like this in America.” 
Since arriving I’d been surrounded by American accents, sharing the first of many three-course dinners (wine unlimited) with a quintet of China-born Wisconsinites. As wives and mothers, they’d appreciated regular girls’ days out – and when three of them had left Milwaukee, they’d upgraded to holidays. “Our kids do summer camp all the time,” said Whitney Ruiz. “Now we’re doing it ourselves – and in a French château!”
Part of a clique comprising employees of Delta, American Airlines and BA, Karie Java Ponder praised the camp’s collaborative ethos over apéro hour. “It’s women supporting women,” she said, brandishing a Kir Royale. “It’s no make-up, be yourself. I don’t even like people very much,” she added roguishly, “but this is fantastic”.
Amidst the Americans was an Australian, a Spaniard and a British Victoria and Albert Museum employee. There were solo travellers, sisters, and groups – including three Brazilians on their first adult European trip. There were all ages at the château but the average skewed younger after the viral social media posts.
Meals meant musical chairs, and most of the 50 guests cited the camp’s unique setting – the picture-perfect Château de Béduer – as the clincher. We dined amid 17th-century tapestries in the Grande Salle and slept amid Louis XVI decor (bathrooms bore wall-to-wall hand-painted Portuguese tiles). There was a 13th-century keep and romantic terraces surveying the rolling countryside.   
Campers share bedrooms or glamping tents – key to the relatively democratic price point. I’d been assigned to the “Chevalier and Châtelaine” bunk and found myself at a teen-style sleepover with roommates aged from their twenties to their sixties.
No expectations seemed to be the camp’s unofficial mantra, resurfacing on the lips of Brit Kilda Meadows, whose art classes primed pleasure over perfectionism. I took heart from that during fun but flawed flirtations with ceramics and watercolours, also signing up for an antiques tour of the château and a horseback ride in the countryside. When the riding revived a back issue, I repaired it with yin yoga under the château’s eaves, 13th-century oxblood daubs mystically adorning the walls.
Alongside astrology and a cultish-sounding “bath bomb” class, there was a trip to the nearby market in medieval Figeac, where a museum fêtes Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion, who deciphered the Rosetta Stone. At night there were films, bingo, petanque and blindfolded wine-tasting. 
As someone who gets the shivers at the thought of wellness, the prospect of a retreat had made me nervous – but, as co-founder and chief executive Philippa Girling told me over pastries, Camp Château didn’t do self-improvement. “You are already awesome. You just need a break,” she said. Accordingly, guests flocked to the hammocks and pools, or went for reiki and massages (available for an extra fee). 
After three decades striving to make the patriarchal banking world more accepting of women and other minorities, Girling had seen the château as a perfect canvas for a camp prizing inclusivity. Her initial goal, she explained, was to hear women laugh – something I heard all week – but now the bar has shifted. “Some women just come and have a lovely time, but a lot come and find a deeply moving connection that I absolutely wasn’t expecting,” she said. “That’s what brings me the most joy.”
Fittingly, women were central to the château’s past, as she told us all during a history talk one night. Châtelaine Jeanne Loviton, pioneering lawyer and seducer of literati (including famed poet Paul Valéry), hid part of the Cinémathèque Française’s archive from the Nazis in the château’s oubliette. Bolder still, she hired Jew-in-hiding Lotte Eisner as curator, marked by a recent plaque. 
Women were also central to its future – the only question being how to welcome the maximum possible amount of them. Girling was heading to Spain that week to scout a potential sister property. “We’re seriously thinking about how to expand without losing the magic,” she said.
Camp felt nostalgic rather than social media cynical. Classes earned us patches to sew onto “châ-totes”, while the stone table facing the château’s entrance was marked “Aslan’s slab” on maps, stressing its portal-like qualities. 
For me, other women were the magic – particularly my roommates, and our riotous, rosé-fuelled picnics. Encouraged by the camp’s empathetic method of operating (overseen by charismatic non-binary camp director Tegwen Evans, one of Philippa’s children), confidences were swapped from the off. So was advice – often of the drolly direct sort, courtesy of no-nonsense sisters Jennifer and Michele Blair.
I hadn’t come to Camp Château as a pilgrim – only to know why it was such a magnet for other women. It was even more curious then to discover that, out of those eight roommates, three of us had lost our mothers at 13 or 14: the kind of deep-seated link Girling had remarked upon. One suggesting that, while chance had brought me to Camp Château’s gates, I was also meant to come.  
Clodagh Kinsella was a guest of Camp Château, which offers five-night, six-day stays for £1,837 per person, including activities and full bed and board. A free shuttle is provided from Figeac train station. Alternatively, Ryanair flies from London to Toulouse from £62 return; private shuttles from Toulouse Airport to the camp cost around £101 per person each way.

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