The short version
We hold personal information about you only if you send it to us, using a form on this site, by email, or by phone. We use it to reply to you and to arrange your retreat, nothing else. We do not sell it, we do not advertise to you, and we do not profile you.
Because we are a recovery service, what you tell us may say something about your health. We treat that as sensitive, we only hold it because you tick a box agreeing to it, and every field that could reveal it is optional.
Enquiries are deleted automatically after 24 months. This site sets no cookies unless you accept them. You can ask us for a copy of what we hold, or ask us to delete it, at any time by emailing hello@pelagusvitae.com.
The rest of this page is the detail behind that.
Who we are
Pelagus Vitae provides adventure-led recovery retreats in Ireland. This policy explains what personal information we collect through pelagusvitae.com, why we collect it, who can see it, and what rights you have over it.
We are the data controller for the information described here. You can reach us at:
Pelagus Vitae, The Spellman Centre, 17 Irishtown Road, Ringsend, Dublin, D04 PW10, Ireland.
Email: hello@pelagusvitae.com
Phone: +353 1 223 2941
What we collect
We collect personal information only when you choose to send it to us using one of the forms on this website. There is no account, no login, no comment section and no user profile area here, so we hold nothing about you unless you contact us.
Enquiry form (Book a Call). Required: your name, an email address or phone number, and which retreat interests you. Optional: who the enquiry is for, and anything you would like us to know before we speak.
Partner referral form. Required: your name and your email address. Optional: your organisation, your role, your phone number, what you would like to tell us about the clients or employees you work with, and any questions you have.
Guide request forms. On our guide pages: your email address, and your first name if you give it. Nothing else. We do not ask, and you should not tell us, anything about anyone's health in order to receive a guide.
Every form asks you to tick a box confirming you are happy for us to hold what you have written. We record that you ticked it, when, and the exact wording you agreed to.
If you contact us by phone or email instead
You do not have to use a form. If you call us or email hello@pelagusvitae.com directly, we will hold whatever you choose to tell us, and any notes a member of our team makes, for the same purpose and for the same period as a form enquiry. Our email is provided by Google Workspace.
If you tell us about someone else
Our partner referral form is for professionals who work with people who might benefit from a retreat, and it asks about the clients or employees you typically work with. If you describe another person to us, you are sharing their information, not your own.
Please only do that where you have their consent or another proper reason to share it, which is what the tick box on that form confirms. Keep it to what we genuinely need in order to have a useful first conversation, and leave out clinical detail that can wait until we speak.
If someone has been described to us and they want to know what we hold, or want it deleted, they can contact us on the details above and we will deal with it in the same way as any other request.
What we do not collect
We do not record your IP address or your browser details alongside your enquiry. We do not buy information about you from anyone else, we do not build profiles of individual visitors ourselves, and we never sell or rent your information. The only optional cookies we use are the analytics and advertising-measurement ones described below, and only if you accept them.
Information about your health
Pelagus Vitae is a recovery service. Because of that, what you choose to tell us in an enquiry may reveal information about your health, or about the health of someone close to you. Data protection law calls this special category information and gives it extra protection. We treat it accordingly.
You are never required to share it. Every field that could reveal health information is optional. You can make a complete enquiry using only your name, a way for us to contact you, and the retreat you are interested in. If you would prefer not to put anything in writing, call us on +353 1 223 2941 and we will talk it through instead.
We rely on your explicit consent to hold this kind of information, which is why both forms ask you to tick a box before you send them. You can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing hello@pelagusvitae.com, and we will delete what we hold.
Why we use your information
We use what you send us for one purpose: to respond to your enquiry and, if you go on to join us, to arrange your retreat. We do not use it for marketing unless you separately ask us to, and we do not make any automated decisions about you.
For ordinary contact details, our basis is that you asked us to get in touch, which are steps taken at your request before entering into a contract.
Where your information goes
When you submit a form, what you send is stored in a secure database operated for us by Amazon Web Services in their Ireland region, encrypted both while stored and while travelling to us. A copy is also sent by email to our team inbox so that we can reply to you.
Access is limited to Pelagus staff who need it in order to respond to you. We do not share your information with advertisers, and we never sell or rent it.
Where it is held. The database sits in Ireland and your information is not moved out of it. Email is different: our inbox is provided by Google Workspace, and Google may process email outside the European Economic Area under the transfer safeguards it offers to its business customers. If you would rather nothing about you sat in an email system, call us on +353 1 223 2941 instead of writing.
Guides and the emails that follow
Some of our pages offer a short guide you can ask for by email. If you request one, your email address, and your first name if you gave it, are stored in the same database as above and passed to Kit (Kit.com, formerly ConvertKit), the service that actually sends you the guide and any follow-up emails. Kit acts as our processor and is based in the United States, so your email address is processed outside the European Economic Area under the transfer safeguards in our agreement with them.
We ask for this separately, and only for this: asking for a guide does not put you on any other list, and it is not treated as an enquiry about a retreat. The emails are a short series from Colin. Every one of them carries an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing stops them immediately. You can also email hello@pelagusvitae.com and we will remove you ourselves.
Kit records ordinary email statistics, such as whether a message was opened. We use those only to judge whether the series is worth sending, never to build a profile of you, and never to work out anything about your health or anyone else's.
Hosting and server logs
This website is hosted on Amazon Web Services. As with any website, the hosting infrastructure processes the technical information needed to deliver pages to your browser, which includes your IP address. This is a normal part of how the internet works, it is handled by our hosting provider, and it is not connected to any enquiry you send us.
Cookies
This site sets no cookies unless you agree to them. Our fonts are served from our own servers rather than from an outside provider, so simply reading this site contacts nobody but us.
Our own visitor counting. We count visits ourselves, on our own servers in Ireland, so that we know which pages are useful. This sets no cookies and stores nothing at all on your device, which is why it does not need your permission. We do not know who you are: to tell one visit from another we use a scrambled code made from your network address and browser, and the key used to scramble it is thrown away and replaced every day. That means we cannot recognise you tomorrow, cannot follow you across other websites, and cannot work backwards to your address. The detail is deleted within 48 hours, leaving only totals such as "40 people read this page". If your browser sends a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal, we count nothing at all.
Two things are optional, and both stay off until you allow them: Google Analytics, which helps us understand how people find and use the site, and the advertising-measurement pixels (the Meta pixel and the LinkedIn Insight Tag) described just below. When you first visit you will see a banner with an Accept and a Decline button given equal weight, and a Choose what’s on option that lets you allow the two purposes independently, for example analytics but not advertising. Nothing is loaded or sent to Google, Meta or LinkedIn until you choose, and if you decline, no request is made at all and the site works exactly as before.
If you accept, Google Analytics sets these cookies:
_ga and _ga_ followed by an identifier. They tell repeat visits apart so we can count people rather than page loads. They last up to two years, and they hold a randomly generated number, not your name or your email.
We have configured Google Analytics so that advertising features, personalisation and data sharing for advertising are switched off. Google acts as our processor for this and may process the data outside the European Economic Area.
We also ask about the Meta pixel, a small piece of code from Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram. We use it for one thing: to measure whether the ads we run actually lead people to ask for a guide or book a call, so that we are not paying for advertising that does not help. It is offered in the same banner as its own separate choice: under “Choose what’s on” you can allow analytics but refuse this, or the other way round. Nothing from Meta is loaded, and nothing is sent to Meta, unless you allow it. If you do not, no request to Meta is made at all and the site works exactly as before.
If you accept, the Meta pixel sets a cookie called _fbp, and _fbc if you arrived from a Meta ad. They hold a randomly generated number so that a click on an ad can be matched to a later action here, such as asking for a guide. They last up to three months. Meta is told that a visit or a sign-up happened, together with the name of the guide, but never the health information or the personal details you enter in a form. Meta uses this data for its own purposes as well, so for this one feature Meta is a data controller alongside us rather than simply our processor, and it processes the data in the United States under the transfer safeguards in its terms. You can also limit this kind of advertising measurement in your Facebook or Instagram settings.
We also use the LinkedIn Insight Tag, a small piece of code from LinkedIn, for the same single purpose: to measure whether the ads we run on LinkedIn actually lead people to ask for a guide or book a call, so that we are not paying for advertising that does not help. It shares the one Measure our ads choice in the banner with the Meta pixel, so allowing or refusing advertising applies to both together. Nothing from LinkedIn is loaded, and nothing is sent to LinkedIn, unless you allow it. If you do not, no request to LinkedIn is made at all and the site works exactly as before.
If you accept, the LinkedIn Insight Tag sets one or more cookies that hold a randomly generated number so that a click on a LinkedIn ad can be matched to a later action here, such as asking for a guide. LinkedIn is told that a visit or a sign-up happened, together with the name of the guide, but never the health information or the personal details you enter in a form. LinkedIn acts as a data controller alongside us for this feature. You can limit this kind of advertising measurement in your LinkedIn account settings.
Changing your mind. Whatever you choose, you can change it whenever you like:
We also store your choices in your browser's local storage so that we do not ask again on every page. That is the only thing we keep without asking, and we keep it precisely so that a refusal is respected.
We ask again every six months. Your answer is not kept indefinitely: after six months we clear it and ask once more, whichever way you answered. That follows Irish guidance, which treats six months as the longest a recorded cookie choice should stand. If you clear your browser storage, we will ask again on your next visit.
How long we keep it
Enquiries, referrals and guide requests are deleted automatically 24 months after you send them. This is not a promise we have to remember to keep: the deletion is built into the database, which removes each submission once it reaches that age.
If you unsubscribe from the guide emails, Kit stops sending immediately and we remove your details from Kit on request; the copy in our own database is deleted on the same 24 month clock, or sooner if you ask.
You can ask us to delete your information sooner at any time and we will do so, unless we are legally required to keep it. If you become a guest with us, records relating to your retreat are handled separately under the agreement we make with you at the time.
Your rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation you have the right to ask us for a copy of the information we hold about you, to have it corrected if it is wrong, to have it deleted, to restrict or object to how we use it, and to receive it in a portable form. Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw that consent at any time, and withdrawing it does not affect anything we did before you withdrew it.
To exercise any of these rights, email hello@pelagusvitae.com. We will respond within one month.
If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Irish Data Protection Commission at dataprotection.ie, or to the supervisory authority in your own country.
Children
Our retreats are for adults. This website is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.
Changes to this policy
If we change how we handle your information, we will update this page and change the date below. Last updated: 10 September 2026.