Afternoon delight at the Thai spa

Back in 2010, when the economy was a little healthier in the corner of the world my job specialises in, we had a Christmas day out to a spa, with two treatments per person and a three course meal.

I have dreamed about it ever since. That’s more than seven years ago. It was the only the second time I’d ever been a spa; the first being July 2010 at a hen do and these two experiences taught me that I’m very much a spa princess, as well as a muddy caver and filthy data researcher. Up until then, I’d never have imagined I was a spa person.

What helped was that in October 2010, I got the flu. I’ve never had it before or since and I spent three days absolutely involuntarily mute, too weak and ill even to watch a DVD (not that I could get up to put it on), another couple of weeks sounding like I’d gargled with Thor’s hammer and a couple of months feeling vaguely lifeless and miserable and randomly bursting into tears.

A day at a spa, with an Ayurvedic head massage and full-body mud treatment, was very much what the doctor ordered.

I’ve checked back hundreds of times over the last seven years, looking at the prices and sighing wistfully but this weekend I decided to indulge myself. Even so, it was only a half day rather than a full day, with no treatments and me telling myself “it’s not too expensive if you only go once every seven years and a bit years”. No, I’m not sponsored. If I was, I’d be back there every weekend.

It’s called Senspa and it’s hidden round the back of Carey’s Manor Hotel in the New Forest. I was headed Southampton-way anyway and it seemed to make sense to spend the afternoon there. I gave myself extra time because you never know what the A31 is going to do and got there forty minutes early.

When I arrived, I was given a medical questionnaire to fill in while drinking green tea, then a wristband and a key to a locker containing a token to operate it, a pair of pool shoes and a robe, invited to help myself to towels from the changing room or reception and I was in the water fifteen minutes before my due start time.

Senspa pool
The pool. Image from senspa.co.uk

The pool is lovely. It has a hotpot, a sauna and a steam room and I gather it’s more or less open to any guest in the hotel who wanders down. There’s a big glass panel in the roof and big glass doors opening onto the Thai garden (not that it’s open in February) and recliners all round the pool. The ceiling is dark blue and studded with twinkly LEDs. So far so good.

Hydrotherapy pool at Senspa
Hydrotherapy pool. Image from senspa.co.uk

And then you use your wristband to open the door to the spa and it’s glorious. I had four hours there. You can easily use an hour just exploring. There’s a hydrotherapy with all sorts of bubbling things, saunas, steam rooms, hot rooms, cool rooms, experience showers, an ice room and various private treatment rooms. Over the restaurant, there’s a relax room with refreshments and magazines. Google Images suggests there’s a hot version of the tepidarium which I never found.

It’s a phone-free zone, which kind of irritates me. I don’t like “phones are eeeevill~**~!!” because I don’t think phones are evil. People mostly don’t use their phones for making phone calls in the 21st century so it’s not as if it’s going to be noisier than the shrieking hen party in the hydrotherapy pool. But I guess it’s not a bad thing to switch off for a few hours and I’m mostly just irritated because I couldn’t take any pictures. This place deserves photos, which is why I’ve had to borrow them from the official site.

Crystal steam room at Senspa
The crystal from the crystal steam room. Image from senspa.co.uk

Even without a phone, it’s surprisingly hard to switch off. My brain doesn’t stop running just because I haven’t got Twitter or Facebook and eventually I found myself arguing the benefits of evolving the ability to digest milk vs evolving the ability to travel by car without being sick. I sat in the crystal steam room for quite a while. The steam is so thick that I couldn’t see the massive chunk of amethyst sitting over the heater and I soon discovered that feet are weird. How can they be so very tough and yet so sensitive? There was nowhere I could put them where the heat didn’t hurt.

The other trouble with steam rooms is sooner or later I find I can’t breathe. I guess humans aren’t really meant to breathe water vapour. Well, it’s not that I can’t breathe. It’s more than I become aware of every single breath, which takes more effort than usual, and then my teeth feel cold and then I decide it’s time to go back in the hydrotherapy pool.

I’m not really into the hot-ice-hot-ice cycle, mostly because I’m not overly fond of ice. But I can drift from bubbly pool to steam room for hours and I did. Until four o’clock, when afternoon tea was served.

Zen Restaurant at Senspa
Zen Restaurant. Image from senspa.co.uk

You might not know this about me because I keep putting off the post on the subject: I don’t eat like normal people. Can’t eat like normal people. For lack of better words, it’s an eating disorder. So meals can be difficult. Afternoon tea, I was promised, was a selection of sandwiches and cakes and a glass of champagne. Now, I don’t like champagne and also, I had to drive less than two hours later and after some hugely entertaining drink-drive stories at work this week, it didn’t seem worth risking it. I also don’t drink tea or coffee so they brought me apple juice. I sat and waited for the food. I could see two ladies two tables away with a cake stand full of things I didn’t recognise and I imagined that was what was going to happen to me. But I sat there and sat there and no food came. I began to wonder if by rejecting the tea, I’d rejected the entire meal. The staff were carrying cups upstairs to the relax room and no food seemed to be on its way. At what point did I give up, finish the apple juice and go back to the pool? I was sitting in an expensive Thai restaurant. I do many odd things. That’s not normally something I do.

And then the food arrived! Now, because I’m weird and broken and special, there was very little I could eat but it looked amazing and now I really resented the no-phones rule because that deserved a photo.

There were little finger sandwiches of egg and ham, a cucumber roll and a sort of blini-thing – smoked salmon on a piece of mini round bread. Pineapple mousse on top, a mini chocolate eclair, two bright green apple macaroons and some kind of beige glistening dome on a biscuit. And then there were two huge chunky scones, almost too hot and fresh to touch and a big dollop of jam and cream.

Even if I could eat real person food, I think I would have still struggled. I ate a scone, smothered in jam. I ate the top of the chocolate eclair – I can’t eat the creamy filling. I started on the second scone and about then was when I realised that the scones were very heavy and very filling because that was the point at which my throat closed up and said “no more” and I had to go and sit quietly in the hydrotherapy pool on the bubble bench and sleep it off for half an hour. In my defense, the two ladies two tables away had this meal between them and by my estimation, they’d barely eaten any more of it than I had. Between them.

Six o’clock, and time to leave, came far too soon. I clock-watched for the last half an hour. Do I really have to go? Can I just sit in the bubble circle for a few more minutes? Have I got time to go in the sauna again? Can’t I stay here?

In fact, by the time I left, it didn’t occur to me to wash my hair afterwards. That’s still full of chlorine now and still slightly damp because I had it in two plaits and the middles take forever to dry. It’s also very poodley – I used to have ringlets like a Victorian china doll and if it gets wet while plaited, it remembers that and becomes obscenely curly. So after the spa, a long hot bath is in order.


Did you know I wrote a book? It’s a true story about an adventure from Helsinki to Reykjavik, chasing the Northern Lights, by train and boat and dogsled. You should buy a copy.

You can buy it from right here.

Minus Twelve front cover