An opening date for Ripon’s new swimming pool has still to be announced.

Harrogate Borough Council said on November 26 that the planned opening on December 8 had been postponed to an unspecified date in January. The delay was attributed to a fault in the lining of the pool.

In mid-December, when the council announced the multi-million pound leisure protect would be named the Jack Laugher Leisure and Wellness Centre, in honour of the Olympic diving hero and former Ripon Grammar School student, the council said the pool would be opening “early in the new year”.

But with less than two weeks of January remaining, no opening date has been revealed.

A council spokesman told the Stray Ferret it “should have further news in the coming days”.

Ripon has been without a public swimming pool for more than two months since Spa Baths closed on November 7.

The new pool and leisure centre has been beset by historic issues of ground stability that affect the Camp Close site at Dallamires Lane. It was originally due to be completed in May 2021 and cost £10.2 million, but it is currently eight months overdue and £4 million over budget.

Read more:

• Swimming club ‘mortified’ by price hike for use of Ripon’s new pool
• Ripon city centre pub closes for ‘forseeable future’

The festive season is over, payday seems like a lifetime away and there is often a sense of pressure to make big life changes at this time of the year.

And all of that is made worse by the fact it is still cold, dark, wet and miserable outside, with months to go until summer comes around.

So it is no surprise that Blue Monday – the ‘most depressing day of the year’ — falls in January.

Blue Monday usually falls on the third Monday of January, which this year is the 17th.

It appears to have originated in 2005 after a press release from Sky Travel used an equation to calculate the dreaded date.

So what should we do this year to beat those Blue Monday blues?

Harrogate life coach Lisa Duffield, owner of the Lisa Duffield Centre, has four tips.

1 Comparison is the thief of joy

“I wanted to share a little insight I have found within the clients I work with.

“Individuals that are suffering from what is branded the ‘January blues’ are all so focused on comparison.

“Comparison of this month to last month, this year to last year…

“You and your family’s goals or plans, compared to the family next door, or the family who you spend all your time watching on Instagram that you will never meet. And from this insight I bring you my first pill-free prescription to beat the case of January blues.

“Comparison is the single biggest waste of your time.

“Next time you find yourself comparing yourself to others or your life to others etc. just stop take a breath and if you insist on comparing yourself at all, think about you, how far have you come, what have you learned since yesterday, last year or even an hour ago.”

Harrogate life coach, Lisa Duffield.

2 Make realistic goals

“January blues can also shine through goal setting and unrealistic expectations.

“For some reason many of us believe that when the clock strikes 12 on January 1, you change into a new person, fitter, healthier, wealthier.

“Old traditions even show that we wish our first foot “all the wealth, health and happiness” for the New Year. While this is very kind, it does not mean that you have to become an overnight fitness fad and a self-made billionaire.

“Here comes the second tip, make realistic goals that you know you are able to achieve.

“You may have a big dream and that is amazing, but break it down into incremental chunks.

“Make smaller goals that you know will get to. They could be ‘eat more green veg’ or ‘move for an extra 30 minutes per day’, rather than ‘complete a bodybuilding competition and win in three months’.”

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3 Surround yourself with positivity

“Spend time with those who make you happy.

“Over Christmas many of us spend a lot of time with family and friends, we make the effort to go and see relatives that we haven’t seen since the year previous, or we say Merry Christmas to people in the street and smile.

“This makes us happy because we have also made others feel happy. Why stop?

“You can still spend time with ones you love and you can still engage with people in the street. A simple good morning or hello will work wonders.”

4 Try something new

“Last but not least. We’ve all heard it. ‘Insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results’.

“It’s time to try something new.

“If you are looking for a different result in 2022 and maybe you are feeling a little deflated, step out of your comfort zone and try something new.

“You will be surprised the paths this teeny act can lead to, you meet new people, learn and experience new things.”

4 ways to cheer yourself up on Blue Monday – by Nina Meads

1 Go for a walk

Nidd Gorge, is one of the many scenic walks that explore nature in the Harrogate district.

In the Harrogate district, we are fortunate enough to be surrounded by stunning countryside. We really are spoilt for choice and personal favourites are Thruscross Reservoir, Nidd Gorge and Hookstone Wood. You also can’t beat a walk around the grounds at Fountains Abbey or Knaresborough waterside.

So lace up those walking boots and head out into the great outdoors. Fresh air and being amongst nature will boost your mood.

If you’re at work, grab a coffee and go for a stroll on your lunch break.

2 Pamper yourself

Rudding Park Spa.

If you want to really spoil yourself, book into Harrogate’s Turkish Baths or enjoy a spa session at Rudding Park, Grantley Hall or Swinton Park.

If money or time is tight, nothing beats a good bath and a book.

3 Do some exercise and practice mindfulness at a Festival of Wellbeing in Harrogate

A ‘festival of wellbeing’ is being held in Harrogate.

While it’s not taking place on Blue Monday itself, OneWellness, in Mowbray Square, is hosting a second Festival of Wellbeing on Saturday, January 15, to help boost mental health.

The free festival from 9am until 4pm, which is being run in association with Mind Harrogate, Sweaty Betty and Hustle & Co, will offer a range of fitness, nutrition and health classes and talks.

From mindfulness and wellbeing, relax and de-stress yoga, to Pilates, barre, and dance cardio classes, the wellbeing experts at OneWellness have tailored each lesson to suit everyone and help boost physical fitness levels whilst increasing positive wellbeing.

4 Meet a friend for a cuppa and cake

Betty’s Harrogate.

The Harrogate district has some of the best coffee shops and tearooms in the country, including lots of amazing independents and the famous Betty’s.

Arrange to meet a friend for a catch-up and lots of laughs. After all, laughter is good for the soul. Oh and don’t forget the cake. That’s essential.

January can be a pretty depressing month.

Our finances have usually taken a hit thanks to Christmas, we feel run-down due to the impact the festive season has had on our nutrition and sleep and the cold, gloomy days don’t help either.

Add to that the effect the pandemic has, and continues to have, on our mental health, it comes as no surprise some of us just want to lie down in a dark room and hibernate until spring.

If the past year has been a slog, these breaks focusing on nutrition, yoga and mindfulness in the Harrogate district can help restore balance, health and creativity.

Even the most dedicated fitness enthusiasts can have a tough time in winter.

Cold days and long nights make it hard to get out of bed, let alone get the body moving, but there are some simple ways to stay motivated and train smart when the cold weather hits.

“The goal is to remove as many obstacles as possible and make small changes that can make staying active easier until the warmer weather returns. At this time of year, exercise can also help to cope with seasonal depression.”

Here are Liv’s top training and wellbeing tips to keep you going in winter:

1. Layer up

When you train outside in cold weather, it’s really important to wear the correct clothing to stop you overheating or getting too cold.

We aren’t always great at dressing for the weather when it comes to training in this country. If you are too cold your muscles will seize up and you can injure yourself, but then if you get too warm that obviously isn’t great either.

So for example if you go running, I would recommend breaking it down to a fitted base-layer. Then you want a nice cosy mid-layer, which you want to be still quite fitted so it locks in the heat, but is still breathable. Then finally you want an outer-layer, which is water resistant but still light and breathable. You can then take it off if you are too hot and put it back on when you get cold. Layering is essential.

2. Stay safe

Wear reflective or bright coloured clothing when you train in the dark. Don’t wear black. Even just a hint of brightness would be better than a dark colour. For example wear a hat or headband that would stand out. Or gloves and trainers which are reflective.

3. Keep nourishing your body

It’s so easy in winter, with the dark, cold nights and mornings to just stuff your face with any old rubbish. But try nourish and fuel your body as much as possible. So for example go for something warming that will keep you full for longer, like porridge or overnight oats.

Also make sure you get your Vitamin D in, which we get from sunlight and obviously lack in this country in the winter months. So this could be in a supplement or from another source of food or drink. Also remember to stay hydrated, which can be easy to forget when the weather is colder.

4. Keep moving

In winter it’s so easy just to hibernate and think oh I’ll just wait for summer. But the best thing you can do for your health – both physically and mentally – is to keep on moving.

So when it’s cold, layer up, get yourself outside. Fresh air is always good for you no matter what the weather is like. Go for a run or a walk – even just 20 minutes will do you the world of good. You don’t have to exercise for hours, even if you just do 10 minutes of something, it’s better than just vegging out on the sofa in front of Netflix. It’s 10 minutes more than you would have done and once you have, I guarantee you will feel better as a result.

5. Make time for you

In winter it can feel harder to fit in training. It is often a busy time of year in the run-up to Christmas and life can get a bit crazy. Your exercise regime can soon end up being put to the back of the queue. When you get home after a busy day at work and it’s dark and cold, it’s difficult to motivate yourself. Equally it’s tougher getting out of bed on dark mornings.

But then we aren’t necessarily doing the things that make us feel good. So it’s about making sure you still make some time to prioritise yourself.

Don’t be afraid to take some time to step back from training if you need to, but use your time wisely.

Even if you don’t feel like training, rather than just getting home and binging on chocolate in front of the TV, get your coat on, get warm and go outside and see your friends for a hot chocolate instead. Make that time for you.

Liv’s top 3 Sweaty Betty winter picks for outdoor training

1. Glisten Seamless Long Sleeve Top

In winter it’s all about layers and I love this top. It keeps you warm but it’s still breathable. It’s made from natural bamboo and it has antibacterial properties so you don’t smell sweaty after you train.

2. Pathfinder Packable Gilet

I like it because it’s very lightweight but still warm – made with recycled feather down – and you can pack it away. It comes with a little bag, like a bumbag, so you can roll it up. You obviously can’t tie it around your waist if you get too hot while you’re out running, but you can put it in the little bag. Perfect for that layering!

3. Power Boost Reflective Workout Zip Through and Power High-Waisted Reflective Gym Leggings

They are breathable and have sweat-wicking, as well as being made with four-way stretch fabric. So they are fitted and still give you shape, but you can move really freely. What I really like about them is they are reflective. So there is that safety aspect for the darker nights.

• Sweaty Betty will be taking over the F45 Harrogate studio on Saturday, October 23 at 10am. To join in with a free functional training session featuring a live DJ and a Heck BBQ, click here to book.

This article is sponsored by Berwins

Going through a divorce is undoubtedly one of the most stressful and painful experiences in life.

There are a whirlwind of emotions to battle once a marriage breaks down, including feelings of grief and heartbreak, stress and fear, confusion and disorientation, disappointment and loss.

But for one Harrogate businesswoman, her divorce from her second husband has led to a new lease of life – so much so, she now helps others to mentally deal with the difficult, and often traumatic, process.

New challenges

Since her split, Lisa Duffield has set up her own life coaching and wellbeing business, the Lisa Duffield Centre, managed a house build and has even climbed Kilmanjaro.

She says she is the happiest she has ever been, and when you meet her, there’s no denying her positivity is infectious.

She said:

“I started my business in 2015 as I was going through the breakdown of my second marriage.

“I just realised I’ve got this natural ability and resilience.

“How you look after yourself – keeping up with your exercise and making sure you get all your sleep and everything when you’re going through a traumatic time – all helps build your resilience.

“And so I realised through doing all this, I actually want to spread the word and help other people as well, so I do coaching, mental fitness, hypnotherapy, and try to help empower people.”

As a woman who has gone through two divorces – although her first was amicable and she is still best friends with her first husband – she feels she is in the perfect position to help others.

She helps people who are getting a divorce to deal with their finances, the actual practicalities of moving house and how to look after their children and bring them up during that difficult time.

Lisa Duffield now helps others going through a divorce.

Lisa said:

“It’s stressful for everybody, people often get so worn down by it. So it’s just about keeping yourself going through that process.

“I moved out from the house I was in, and since then I’ve bought a plot of land and built my own house in lockdown, which will be like a wellbeing retreat. Now I do lots of motivational talks and stuff like that.”

Lisa, who has three daughters, says she has always had a business head on her shoulders, and set up a number of businesses with her first husband, whom she is close to and still works with.

Rebuild

But since her second divorce from her husband of nine years, she has had to rebuild everything again as it had a financial impact.

She said:

“I think that one of the main things I would advise others going through divorce is if they do have the coaching and help and support they can actually separate the different aspects of it. That is the emotional, the financial and the family.

“It’s also things like if you do have children and separate, it’s important not to use the children as a weapon because this will be something you regret. You must not do game-playing. You just get caught up in this awful battle and it’s just not worth it at all.

“The financial coaching is absolutely crucial, that’s one of the biggest fears when going through a divorce. What’s going to happen about the money? Where are they going to live? Which school are the children going to go to? Have you lost a certain amount of friends? It’s a huge trauma.

“This is what got me into this line of work. I can help people and coach them through so they can have a logical way of thinking about it, rather than letting their emotions overcome. This leads to feelings of resentment, revenge, punishment, which doesn’t do anyone any good in the end.”

Stronger

Since deciding to launch her business, Lisa started off training to become a clinical hypnotherapist. Since then she has gone on to do lots of other advanced courses in Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), as well as a a corporate executive coaching course.

She said:

“I’m currently working with a London law firm, setting up a wellbeing strategy. I’m helping people to feel empowered and to realise when you feel you are really down and you can’t pull yourself back up, you absolutely can.

“I would definitely say I have come back better, stronger and more positive.”

Lisa said she decided to divorce her second husband when she felt the marriage wasn’t equal she “felt stagnant” in her life.

She said:

“I felt like I had been stupid, like I had been manipulated and deceived.

“I felt like I was never going to be able to find true happiness in the relationship I was in. This is what made me decide that I need to get out. I think the realisation was the second marriage was a mistake because at the time I didn’t feel like a whole person.

“I thought if I met someone else, the two halves will come together to make a whole person and this doesn’t happen.

“If you’re not a whole person yourself, you’re not in a good place to meet another whole person.

“So I realised I needed to work on my identity and discover who I was and work on personal development for myself. I realised I had to go it alone. I felt I was looking and thinking a man was going to complete my life.

“You need to be a strong individual yourself and then you are in a position to be in a proper relationship with somebody.

“I suppose coming out of it, it’s working in personal development. And that’s what I love helping people with now.”

And Lisa has certainly come a long way since her second divorce. Her wellbeing business, which started off with just Lisa as a clinical hypnotherapist, now has around 15 practitioners on the books.

She regularly travels to London and has done work with O2, the NHS, Capita and PricewaterhouseCoopers. She has mentored some of the world’s strongest men, helping them with their mental focus. As well as project managing her own housebuild, she is also about to set up a new online platform for a second hand plant machinery business.

And she has achieved all this on her own.

She said:

“I found myself, and now I want to help others to get that strength. I’ve been on that journey, so I can help.

“I’ve not only started again, I’ve surpassed it. I’m up at the top of that hill and it’s brilliant.”

Lisa at the summit of Kilamanjaro.

‘Adventure junkie’

She has also become a self-confessed “adventure junkie” and has climbed Kilimanjaro, Machu Picchu and Ben Nevis. She has also been skydiving and sea Kayaking around the Farne Islands.

Her upcoming challenges include a charity Zambezi River trip, a trek across the Sahara Desert and the Dalai Lama Himalayan Trek.

She said:

“All of these things I have managed to do as a single woman. You do not need to be married to do whatever you want to do.

And women are now more powerful than ever. It’s not that I would put men down, but I am certainly equal to the best of those men out there.”

A charity wellbeing and fitness event is being held in the grounds of Ripon Cathedral today to bring the community together after the pandemic and raise funds for the city’s YMCA branch.

Participants will be able to take part in yoga, meditation, dance fitness and Clubbercise, which will be led by local personal trainers and fitness instructors, who have given up their time for free, as well as enjoy head massages from Head to Toe Healing.

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Wellbeing Day for the YMCA will take place in the Dean’s Garden from 2-4pm and currently has more than 40 people signed up.

Louise Jones, who owns Oliver’s Pantry, on North Street, and is one of the organisers, said:

“We are holding it to raise funds and awareness, our objective was to have some fun and bring people together and to also help some of our local yoga and PT instructors promote what they do.

“Also from a mental health and wellbeing aspect, these activities really do help so many people locally. So it’s about feeling great, having some fun, coming together and simply seeing people together – knowing after lockdown many have struggled with coming back out in to normality.”

Four 30-minute sessions will be provided by:

Nicola Lymer – yoga (Exhale Fitness)

Frayah Humphries – Essential Yoga with Frayah

Hayley Anderson Fitness – Clubbercise

Edina – dance fitness (M-Unity)

To book a place email events@riponymca.org The suggested donation is £20 and participants should bring a mat, blanket or towel, and a drink.

Less than 12 years ago when Katie Kavanagh was 14 weeks pregnant, her 29-year-old husband Peter was fighting for his life with stage three bowel cancer.

For the young couple looking forward to the birth of their first child, a difficult journey lay ahead, but one which took them on the path to a new way of living.

Peter’s life was saved by the treatments and care he received at the Yorkshire Clinic in Bingley, but his recovery and return to health has come through the holistic approach that he and Katie have adopted.

Katie told the Stray Ferret:

“The Yorkshire Clinic were brilliant in the way they looked after Peter and following on from this, a fundamental part of his longer-term recovery came with changing the food he had previously been eating to a plant-based diet.”

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Now with children aged 10 and 11, they have moved on from respective careers as a financial adviser and school teacher.

Peter has built a successful renewable energy company based in Knaresborough, while Katie has used the knowledge gained in supporting her husband’s recuperation to create The Acorn Wellness Retreat on the Brimham Rocks Road at Hartwith.

As part of its work, the not for profit business has links with MacMillan Cancer Support and Breast Cancer Haven.

Referrals are received from the two charities and the centre helps a number of people each year who are recovering from illness or are carers in need of respite and rejuvenation. The cost of providing the free places is covered by the revenue raised from paying clients.

A practitioner prepares to take a yoga session. (Photograph courtesy of Acorn Wellness Centre)

The retreat provides therapies that are in tune with the nature of its green and sylvan surroundings, with the natural grain of wood and a woodland theme featuring throughout its interior, complementing the grounds with its signature sycamore tree.

Since The Acorn opened in 2016, foods including vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, seeds and legumes, and containing no animal products, have been on the menu.

The other key ingredients in the holistic approach to achieving wellness are mindfulness sessions, various types of yoga, massage, sleep and relaxation therapies, supported with the use of herbal medicines, essential oils and use of rare earth stones.

Katie added:

“We have a dedicated team of practitioners who work together with the aim of creating a wheel of wellness within a calm and relaxing setting, where clients benefit from the sights and sounds of the natural environment.”

As well as helping people to recuperate after serious illness, the centre has clients who come either on their own or in groups, to relax by getting in tune with nature.

With social distancing requirements arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people receiving treatment at any one time is currently restricted to a maximum of six.