Our Editor in the Field

Kyra Pollitt meets Anna Neubert-Wood

Kyra Pollitt

Picture the scene, if you will. It’s mid-January, I’m back at work, I’m running out of time to make a rendezvous, my technology is melting, and someone is at my shoulder being ‘helpful’. I’m about to experience my first stress-out of 2022. Perfect timing, in a way, because I’ll shortly be meeting Anna Neubert-Wood, proprietor of WanderWomen, an award-nominated business offering ‘outstanding outdoor experiences for women’, with ‘a unique mix of mindfulness and adventure’. That’s if she’s still there, now that I’m late…

We have arranged to meet outside a café on Portobello promenade. I realise halfway there that I haven’t done my research either, so have no clue what she looks like. I needn’t worry. She’s still there, and she’s unmistakeable. A languid, willowy figure greets me calmly, gently brushing away my apologies. Willow is an apt description not only of Anna’s height and physique, but of her aura— the dappled green of sunlight through new leaves comes to mind, and I can almost smell the salicin. As we introduce ourselves, I detect an accent and so the story unfolds…

Anna was born and raised in the former Democratic Republic of East Germany. She was nine years old when the Berlin Wall came down. She credits her parents with protecting her from the worst of the regime. Avoiding enrolment in the Young Pioneers— possibly because she was left-handed and much official time was dedicated to ‘correcting’ this —her parents reduced her exposure to the propaganda of the day by not keeping a television in the house. They didn’t have a landline either and certainly not a car. Instead, Anna recalls a happy childhood with as much time spent in nature as possible. This was her parents’ tried and trusted method of escape, of experiencing a freedom that communicated itself strongly to their little girl. She valued the times spend in a hut in nature and laughs now at how naturism was practised as a kind of immutable defiance of a State that controlled almost every other aspect of life. ‘I suppose it was a childhood spent in a kind of lockdown’, she muses.

It’s a cold, bright day in Edinburgh, and Portobello beach is offering some of its most beautiful light. People are strolling, playing, and boating. Anna wonders aloud whether nudism might be Porty’s next big thing, after wild swimming became so popular during the pandemic. In this moment, I could go for that. Laughing easily, Anna tells me how lifechanging many of the women in her groups find it simply to strip down to their swimsuits together in public. ‘It’s as if they are stripping off the layers of socialisation, psychological layers’, she says.

Anna organises group activities in the outdoors that allow women to connect with each other and with themselves. The women are from all walks of life, of all ages. And it’s not just about swimming. Anna loves collaborating. Amongst others, she has worked with a botanist, a woman who gives sound baths, and a forager to offer a range of sound baths, and a forager to offer a range of activities, and her door is always open. She is struck by how women commonly react to the night walks she offers:

They often bring along torches, and mobile phones.It’s amazing how uncomfortable many women feel in the dark. They don’t trust their eyes to adjust. They are not accustomed to feeling safe and they have not learned to enjoy the beauty of the night, the silence.

Anna loves silence. I wonder how compatible her gentleness is with facilitating groups of women who have never met before and may bring emotional baggage of all shapes and sizes. She doesn’t deny that there’s a considerable degree of stress involved in supervising everyone’s safety, but says that, in the best cases, the groups become almost self-supporting. She tells me of one unusual instance involving two women who booked a private session. They were sisters who had been separated at birth and had never met, but chose to reconnect physically through one of Anna’s offerings. I get a sense that the responsibility of her position is tempered by unique privilege.

And she’s very organised. Before moving to Scotland, Anna lived in London where she met a Fifer with excellent taste who married her and persuaded her to move north. Later, as a mother, she was horrified by the age at which children in the UK are expected to start school, so did some research. She discovered that Scotland is one of few places in the UK where children can be educated ‘flexibly’. So, every Monday, her boys took time out of school to enjoy connecting with nature, just as their mother had when she was their age. They learned to identify plants, build with stones, weave with willow, be outdoors. To Anna, this should be everyone’s birth right and it’s what she tries to give back to the women who come to her stressed, alienated, fearful and depleted.

In the past, she has worked with Women’s Aid, and with projects at Wester Hailes, and offers a KarmaWomen service that allows women to ‘pay it forward’ by supporting places for others. But it’s one of her 2022 ambitions that more women facing economic or social barriers are given opportunities to access the benefits of her work, perhaps even finding opportunities to provide services to and through the NHS. She plans to balance all that by encouraging more corporate clients to engage her for team bonding events.

Since we’re talking business, I feel I must compliment her on her branding; the name ‘WanderWomen’ is a thing of genius. ‘Ah’, she says somewhat ruefully, and therein hangs another tale…

You can find out more at wander-women.co.uk, and follow Anna’s work on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook: @wanderwomenscotland