Free desk-assessment morning for local businesses, Friday 9 October: six places left
Osteopathy and chiropractic for backs, necks, desks, pregnancies, babies and grandparents, in the wharf house by the lock. A 45-minute first visit that ends with a plan and an honest number of sessions, £64. Acute back pain seen today.
The visit-three promise: at visit three you score your pain and what you can do against visit one.
New patients this week · No GP referral needed
Is it my back, my posture or my desk?
Sheet I of VII
Pick the main one. If there are two, pick the worst; the practitioner will look at the rest.
Your first visit
£6445 minutes
Plate IHelp with
Pick the plate that sounds like you; each says who you see, how soon, and from what.
Low back pain, sciatica, neck pain and the stiffness that comes with both. Osteopathy or chiropractic, your choice or ours, with an honest plan on visit one.
Ground floorBack, pelvic and rib pain in pregnancy, treated side-lying with pillows; a postnatal check at six weeks. Mei Lin, who has the paediatric and pregnancy training, leads it.
Ground floorGentle osteopathy for babies who are unsettled, feeding to one side or holding their head one way, and for children with aches from sport, growth and schoolbags. Honest about what the evidence does and does not show.
Ground floorThe neck, shoulders and lower back that arrive by Friday. Treatment at the wharf and a desk assessment at your desk, so the cause is fixed as well as the pain.
StairsHeadaches that start in the neck, jaw pain and clicking, and the clenching that links the two. Daniel's clinic on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.
StairsDeep, specific massage for training legs, tight shoulders and the week after a long run or a long drive. Tom's room upstairs; 30 or 60 minutes.
StairsStiff mornings, worn hips and knees, the fear of falling. Slower appointments, a lower table, chair-based exercises and a programme built around staying independent.
Ground floorYou have had treatment elsewhere, or a scan and a diagnosis, and you want a second pair of hands and a plain-words view of what to do next. An hour with Ruth and a written report.
Ground floorPlate IIYour first visit
Wear something loose; we have shorts, a gown and a towel.
Your first visit
£6445 minutes
Chiropractic first visits are £68 with Sophie; pregnancy £68, babies £58, the headache clinic £68, second opinions £95 with a written report. Acute back pain is seen the same day: phone Grace.
After your first visit: what arrives, when
We would rather lose a patient than treat the wrong thing.
Use the triage, read the conditions page, or phone Grace and describe it. You get the right first visit, the price and who you would see before you book.
Online, by WhatsApp or by phone. Acute back pain: phone, and we hold slots each morning. Insured? Grace checks your authorisation before you arrive. Want the ground floor? Say so.
45 minutes: questions, watching you move, a hands-on examination explained as it happens, treatment on the day with your consent for each technique, and a plan with an honest number of visits. Wear something loose; we have shorts, a gown and a towel.
An email with what we found in plain words, your two or three exercises with photos, what to expect over the next two days, and the review date.
Measured against visit one every time. Visit three is the review: clearly better, the plan spaces out; not clearly better, it changes or we refer you.
Average visit 3.6. A maintenance plan, a clear list of what would bring you back, and a block or a membership only if it fits. Unused block sessions are refunded.
Plate IIITreatments
Prices are what you pay; blocks bring follow-ups down.
Back & neck
Pregnancy & postnatal
Babies & children
Desk & posture
Headaches & jaw
Older adults & balance
Second opinion
Before you pay
Billed directly
BupaAXA HealthVitalityWPA
Cash plans: Simplyhealth, Medicash pay you back with our receipt.
Moving an appointment
Move or cancel an appointment up to 24 hours ahead at no charge, online or by phone. Later cancellations and missed appointments are charged at half the session price; a block or membership session is used instead. Insurers do not cover this, so it is billed to you.
A follow-up, per visit
How many visits will I need?
Our average is 3.6 to discharge, including the first; most people are done by visit four, chiropractic a visit or so more, babies fewer. You get an honest number at the end of the first visit and a formal review at visit three, and if you are not clearly better we change the plan or refer you rather than keep going.
Ways to pay
No GP referral needed. Nobody is sold a block on day one.
Plate IVThe practitioners
Every osteopath is on the GOsC register; the chiropractor on the GCC's. Check them.
Principal osteopath
“By visit three you should be able to tell me it is working. If you cannot, the plan changes, not the patient.”
Osteopath: desk, posture, headache and jaw clinic
“I can loosen a neck in thirty minutes. The laptop on the kitchen table will tighten it again by Thursday unless we fix that too.”
Osteopath: older adults, balance and home visits
“Nobody over seventy wants to be told to rest. They want to be told how to get up the stairs, so that is what we work on.”
Osteopath: pregnancy, postnatal, babies and children
“I will not promise to fix colic, because nobody honest can. I can check the whole baby, help with what I find, and show you what makes the evenings easier.”
Chiropractor
“An adjustment is one tool. If your neck should not be adjusted, I will tell you, and we will do something else.”
Sports massage therapist
“Deep is not the same as painful. Tell me when it is too much and I will believe you.”
Practice manager: the person who answers the phone
“Tell me where it hurts and whether you can do mornings. I will find the right person and the slot.”
Check the register
Only someone on the GOsC register may call themselves an osteopath; only someone on the GCC register a chiropractor.
Demonstration numbers; a real practice shows its own.
Plate VPrices & blocks
Follow-ups are where the money goes, so that is where the saving is. Blocks are valid twelve months, work with any osteopath or the chiropractor, can be shared with your household, and unused sessions are refunded if you are discharged early. Nobody is sold a block on day one; the plan comes first.
Per follow-up
Pay as you go
£52
osteopathy follow-up
The honest choice for a short plan
The right choice if your plan is two or three visits.
Block of 4
Most plans£192£48 each
four follow-ups, £48 each
Saves £16 against 4 visits at £52
The block most plans fit: visits two to five.
Block of 8
£360£45 each
eight follow-ups, £45 each
Saves £56 against 8 visits at £52
For long-standing problems, two people in one house, or maintenance.
Maintenance memberships
After discharge, a hand on it
One 30-minute follow-up a month with any osteopath or the chiropractor. £10 less than 1 follow-up pay as you go.
Two 30-minute follow-ups a month. £26 less than 2 follow-ups pay as you go.
Three follow-ups a month shared by anyone at your address. £51 less than 3 follow-ups pay as you go.
Memberships are self-pay; insurers do not cover maintenance visits. First visits are always paid separately, because the plan comes first.
Plate VIPregnancy & babies
We follow the GOsC and ASA advertising rules to the letter, and say so.
Back, pelvic and rib pain in pregnancy, treated side-lying with pillows; a postnatal check at six weeks. Mei Lin, who has the paediatric and pregnancy training, leads it.
Within the week; third trimester within 48 hours£68
Gentle osteopathy for babies who are unsettled, feeding to one side or holding their head one way, and for children with aches from sport, growth and schoolbags. Honest about what the evidence does and does not show.
Within the week, in the baby room£58
Honest about babies
We check the whole baby and help with tightness and one-sidedness. We do not claim to treat colic, reflux, sleep or flat head, because the evidence does not let us; and we tell you when the GP is the right call.
“By visit three you should be able to tell me it is working. If you cannot, the plan changes, not the patient.” — Ruth Ashdown
Plate VIIOur numbers
Every patient scores their pain and what they can do at visit one and visit three, and we log every discharge, referral and same-day request. These are our own figures for 2025, not industry averages, and we publish the ones that do not flatter us too. Demonstration data for this template.
3,120
patients seen
New and returning across the eight clinics. 64% self-pay, 29% insured or on a cash plan, 7% employer-funded.
3.6
average visits to discharge
Including the first visit. Median 3; 82% discharged within five visits. Chiropractic runs a little higher (4.2) with shorter visits; babies lower (2.0).
72%
clearly better by visit 3
Of 2,480 first visits, the proportion reporting at least a 30% improvement in pain and function on their own 0 to 10 scores by the visit-three review. 11% were somewhat better, 17% were not, and of those most were referred on or told to stop.
88%
acute back requests seen the same day
Of 690 calls about a back that went in the last 72 hours. The other 12% were seen next morning. Median wait for everything else: 1.6 days.
The honest line
1 in 6
not better by visit 4
The honest line: 17% of patients had no useful change by visit four. 61% of those were referred to a GP, imaging or a specialist; the rest chose to stop or to try the other discipline here. We do not keep booking people who are not improving.
81%
pregnancy patients with easier pelvic pain by visit 2
Of 210 pregnancy patients scoring pelvic girdle pain at visit one and two. Postnatal checks are counted separately: 140 done, 31 referred to a women's health physio for pelvic floor work.
2.0
visits per baby
Of 410 babies and children. 22% discharged after one visit; 9% referred to the GP or health visitor at visit one because what we found was not ours to treat.
78%
desk patients better at three months
Of 260 desk assessments followed up by phone at three months. 14% had bought the chair we suggested; the rest were fixed with what they had.
Safety, counted
Every neck screened; nine in ten not manipulated at all.
The visit-three promise. At visit three you score your pain and what you can do against visit one. If you are not clearly better, we change the approach, swap you to the other discipline at no extra first-visit charge, or write to your GP for imaging or a referral. Any unused block sessions are refunded. We do not keep booking people who are not improving.
Audit year 2025 · 3,120 patients · 11,400 appointments · 2,480 first visits · 410 babies and children · 260 desk assessments
Soreness for more than 48 hours after treatment
Patient-reported at the next visit; expected and usually mild. Higher after a first visit than a follow-up.
3.1% of visits
Flare needing an unplanned extra visit
Seen the same or next day at no charge. All settled within two weeks.
1.4% of patients
Neck manipulation performed
Every neck is screened for dizziness, visual change and unusual headache first; mobilisation is used instead where there is any doubt or the patient prefers it.
9% of neck visits
Serious adverse events
None recorded. Published estimates for serious harm after spinal manipulation are very rare but not zero, which is why screening and consent are done every time.
0 in 11,400 visits
Referred on at visit one
To a GP, A&E, imaging or a specialist because the examination found something that was not ours to treat. Includes 9% of babies.
4.8% of first visits
Pain and function are scored by the patient on 0 to 10 scales at visit one and visit three (and at week six on the Steady programme); 'clearly better' is an improvement of 30% or more on both. Discharges, referrals and adverse events are logged in the practice system and audited each January by Ruth and Karolina. Same-day figures come from the phone log. Numbers are rounded; babies are counted with their parent's consent. These are demonstration figures for this template.
Plate VIIIInsurers & cash plans
Billed directly with your authorisation
BupaAXA HealthVitalityWPA
Cash plans: you claim back
SimplyhealthMedicash
Bupa, AXA Health, Vitality and WPA are billed directly with your authorisation number; you pay only the excess. Simplyhealth and Medicash cash plans pay you back with our receipt. Massage, desk assessments, blocks and memberships are self-pay on nearly every policy. Grace checks your cover first.
Plate IXStories
No before-and-after photographs; what it cost and how long it took.
Helen, 52
Osteopathy for acute low back pain
Discharged at visit three with a maintenance plan and a note of what would bring her back. She came back nine months later for a follow-up before a long-haul flight, on the pay-as-you-go price, and that was that.
Joanne, 34
Pregnancy osteopathy and the postnatal check
Walked to school from visit two, slept, and says the postnatal check was the most useful appointment of the pregnancy. Now on the Household membership with her mother, who does Steady.
Derek, 74
The Steady programme
Balance test up from 9 to 19 seconds on one leg, stairs as many times a day as he likes, and back on the towpath with a walking pole he chose himself. He does a Monthly membership visit now and came to Karolina's talk with three friends.
Plate XWhat patients say
“Rang at 8am with a back that had gone getting out of the car and Grace had me on Ruth's table by ten. Three visits, an email with the exercises that evening, and at visit three Ruth asked me to score it and said 'good, you don't need me for a while'. That is the first time anyone in this line of work has told me to stop coming.”
Helen R.
“Took our six-week-old to Mei Lin because he only ever looked left. She checked all of him, showed us how to hold and play so he turned the other way, and was completely straight that she could not promise anything about the evening crying. Two visits. He looks both ways now and we felt listened to, which was the bit we needed.”
Priya and Sam
“Daniel came to my kitchen table, which is my office, moved the laptop onto a riser, gave me a keyboard from a drawer, and told me not to buy the £600 chair I had in my basket. Neck is fine. Report was in my inbox before he had got back to his car.”
Mark T.
“Pelvic pain at 28 weeks, could not turn over in bed. Mei Lin treated me on my side with a mountain of pillows, fitted a belt and gave me a way to sleep. Two visits and I could walk to school again. The postnatal check at six weeks was the most useful appointment of the whole pregnancy.”
Joanne F.
“I am 74 and did the Steady programme with Karolina after a wobble on the towpath. Four visits, exercises on the fridge, balance score up at the end and stairs no longer a worry. She never once told me to rest.”
Derek W.
“Sophie was honest that she would not adjust my neck because of the dizziness I mentioned, and did gentler work instead. It took five visits rather than the three she first thought, hence four stars for my impatience, not for her. The block of four made it cheaper and I got the spare session refunded.”
Anna K.
Plate XIQuestions patients ask
The cracking sound, the neck, the GP letter, what to wear.
The click is gas releasing from the fluid in a joint when it is moved quickly, the same as cracking knuckles; it is not bone. It is one technique among many, it does not have to happen for treatment to work, and you can say no to it. Plenty of our patients never have it.
Soreness for a day or two is common. Serious harm is very rare, but with neck manipulation it is not zero, so every neck is screened for dizziness, visual changes and unusual headaches first, and we use gentle mobilisation instead where there is any doubt or you would rather. We never manipulate without asking, and never where bones are fragile.
No. Book straight in. Some insurers want a GP referral before they authorise osteopathy or chiropractic; Bupa, AXA Health and Vitality usually do not, WPA sometimes does. Grace checks for you before you arrive.
Yes. Mei Lin has postgraduate training in pregnancy and paediatric osteopathy, treats side-lying or seated with pillows, never on your front, and never manipulates the lower back or pelvis in the third trimester. We treat back, pelvic, hip and rib pain; we do not claim to help morning sickness, turn a baby or bring on labour.
Check the whole baby, help with muscular tightness and a strong preference for one side, and show you handling that makes feeding and tummy time easier. The evidence for osteopathy and colic, reflux, sleep or flat head is limited, and the advertising rules for osteopaths do not let us claim those; we do not. Most parents find their baby easier after a visit or two; some see no change and we say so.
Bupa, AXA Health, Vitality and WPA are billed directly with your authorisation number and you pay only the excess. Simplyhealth and Medicash cash plans pay you back with our receipt, up to your annual limit. Massage, desk assessments, blocks and memberships are self-pay on nearly every policy.
Something loose you can move in. For a back or hip we may ask you to strip to underwear or wear shorts; we have shorts and a gown, a towel covers you, and you can keep leggings on if you prefer. You can bring someone with you. Say what you are comfortable with and we work around it.
Our average is 3.6 to discharge, including the first; most people are done by visit four, chiropractic a visit or so more, babies fewer. You get an honest number at the end of the first visit and a formal review at visit three, and if you are not clearly better we change the plan or refer you rather than keep going.
Plate XIIFree, at the wharf
Twenty minutes with the laptop you actually use, or an hour on why bed rest is wrong.
9October
08:30 to 12:30, 20-minute slots at your office or ours
Daniel does twenty minutes per person: chair, screen, laptop, two things to change, a short report. Free for any business in the town, no obligation, up to twelve people. Bring the laptop you actually use.
12 placesSave a place →
17October
09:30 to 12:00, drop in
Mei Lin in the baby room: fifteen-minute chats about pelvic pain, sleep positions, feeding posture and what osteopathy can and cannot do for a baby. Tea, biscuits, buggies inside. Free; no treatment on the day, just honest answers.
20 placesSave a place →
4November
14:00 to 15:15
Karolina on why balance goes, the three exercises that do the most, shoes, stairs and rugs, and when a stumble is worth a visit. In the ground-floor room; chairs for everyone. Free; bring a friend.
18 placesSave a place →
19November
18:30 to 19:30
Ruth and Sophie on acute back pain: why bed rest is wrong, what the click is, what osteopathy and chiropractic each do, and the warning signs that mean A&E. Free, at the wharf.
24 placesSave a place →
Plate XIIIBook a first visit
Choose what you need, pick a practitioner and a time, tell us how to reach you
Your first visit
£6445 minutes
Billed directly: Bupa, AXA Health, Vitality, WPA. Cash plans pay you back with our receipt.
Practitioners, slots and times are demonstration data.
Sheet I
Back & neck
Pregnancy & postnatal
Babies & children
Desk & posture
Headaches & jaw
Sports massage
Older adults & balance
Second opinion
Plate XIVFind the green door
We are the brick wharf house beside the lock on Lock Lane, the canal side of Bridge Street
WX4 3QLOpen in Google Maps →
By car
Sat-nav to WX4 3QL brings you over the canal bridge onto Lock Lane. Six spaces outside the green door; the Wharf car park on Bridge Street is two minutes away and free for the first hour, which covers a follow-up.
By train
Fennbridge station is a twelve-minute walk: down Station Road, over the canal bridge and left onto Lock Lane. Trains from Wexbury every half hour. If walking is the problem, say so and Grace will book a taxi to meet you.
By bus
Routes 3 and 21 stop on Bridge Street by the lock, one minute from the door. Both are step-free buses.
On foot or by bike
The towpath runs straight to the wharf from both directions; lock your bike to the rail by the green door. Walking in is part of most people's plan, so we encourage it.
We come to you
Home visits within eight miles of Fennbridge for anyone who cannot get to the wharf, £110 including travel. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.
Access
Sudden severe back pain?
Phone and Grace answers. Say where it hurts and whether you can do mornings.
01632 960440everything else within 48 hours. No GP referral needed.
Two doors, one green
Green door, Lock Lane (ground floor)
Step-free.
Back & neck Pregnancy & postnatal Babies & children Older adults & balance Second opinion
Green door, then one flight of stairs (rooms 2 and 3)
One flight of stairs; ask for the ground floor if you need it.
Desk & posture Headaches & jaw Sports massage