I Am A Polar Bear

I went to Bath Thermae Spa about ten years ago, having been sent up to Bath College on a couple of days’ notice to replace a colleague on a social media course. The course was terrible, the hotel I stayed in was so unmemorable that I don’t even remember it and I don’t think I blogged the spa at all. So I went back with my brain switched on, poised to get all the details – and also because I’m writing a book about hot baths, bathing culture, steam and all that and it’s going to form part of the first chapter.

People have been bathing in Bath for thousands of years. We know the Romans built a large bath complex here – no, not on the current Thermae Spa site but just around the corner – but they named the city Aquae Sulis, the Waters of Sul, who is thought to be a Celtic water goddess whose name appears virtually nowhere else, and there’s a legend of a Prince Bladud bathing in the hot waters and then founding the city around 836BC. I did visit the Roman Bath complex and was disappointed that you’re not allowed in the water, but I’ll tell you all about that on Thursday.

Bath Thermae Spa is the only spa in the UK fed by natural warm waters. There are three springs in the area – the Cross Spring, the Hetling Spring and the King’s Spring – and the spa takes its water from all three, coming up at about 45º and being cooled to around 34º for bathing. These days it comes up from boreholes drilled into the springs rather than naturally bubbling up and is treated before being used in the Thermae. The closest spring is the Cross Spring, which is still allowed to bubble up in the Cross Bath in the little building right opposite. As well as being a mini-spa, this is something of a place of pilgrimage to Sul and the natural waters.  You can rent out the whole place privately for a group of ten for an hour and a half for £800/£1000 with champagne and snacks or you can enter the public sessions on a Tuesday, at the extortionate price of £40 for an hour and a half, including your changing time.

The Thermae Spa is in the big building opposite; half yellow stone Georgian-style and half glass box. This building actually only dates back to 1998 and replaced the local Beaumont swimming pool which used to occupy this bit of prime real estate. At the moment, it seems to be having some repairs to the columns out the front so you have to use the side door but that’s only temporary. It’s £42.50 for two hours during the week or £47.50 at weekends, which is still very expensive, especially for two hours, but there’s more going on than in the Cross Baths.

An improvement from a decade ago: you can now book your session online rather than turn up at dawn to queue and hope. You still can do that if you like to be spontaneous but I like to be sure I can get into the place I’ve travelled for. Another change is that at reception, you’re given a padded pouch with a magnetic lock on it for sealing your phone away from temptation. I understand and appreciate that they’re strict about no phones or cameras; I’m a little bemused they’re not more strict about checking that you’re using the pouch.

The changing cabins are mixed sex and open on both sides. You walk in from reception side, change and step out the other side to a bank of lockers which operate exactly like Iceland’s Blue Lagoon with your electronic wristband. Pick a locker, put everything in, close the door, identify the nearest lock panel, which will be beeping and counting down, press the wristband against it and it will lock the locker while registering that number to that band. This seemed to confuse a lot of people, despite illustrated instructions inside the locker doors.

They give you a towel and robe on your way in, so lock the towel away to keep it dry for when you need it and sally forth in your robe. I think these are a little past their best – mine only had one belt loop and that was attached only at one end, and I saw other people who’d given up on threading the belts and just tied them or stuffed them into the pockets. You’ll want the robe – Thermae is situated, technically, on six different floors.

Reception is on the ground floor. You go up a few steps to the changing rooms on the upper ground floor and then the Minerva Bath and treatment rooms are on the lower ground. The Springs Cafe and Springs treatment rooms are on the first floor, the Wellness Suite and terrace are on the second and the famous rooftop pool is on the third. I emerged from the changing rooms onto the Rotunda staircase, which I used first to go down to Minerva and then went all the way up to the roof. Don’t do that! Cross the floor to the part on the other side of the two pools with a lift!

The Minerva pool is the indoor one. Despite being, effectively, in the basement, it’s very light and airy, the ceiling held up by four white “mushrooms”, each with a rope of LED lights around the top in a different colour. A mural on the lift side of the pool tells you that the waters fell as rain 10,000 years ago and sank 3km, that the Romans bathed in the same thermal waters 2000 years ago, that the naturally warm water is unique in the UK and that they contain “over 42 minerals”, which strikes me as a very weird claim. 43 minerals? Or they don’t really know? “Over 40 minerals” would sound fine, it’s the combination of the precision of “42” with the vagueness of “over”. There’s a bubble pool, a lazy river that runs around the outside of it and a neck massage jet positioned just a bit too far back to actually massage your neck. Despite the fact that Thermae never really gets quiet, it feels quiet and peaceful here, but in a way that feels like people aren’t coming here rather than being inherently peaceful.

That’s because everyone’s upstairs in the rooftop pool. As I said, take the lift, don’t climb six flights of stairs in your wet swimsuit and robe. In late January, it’s chilly up here, so you’ll want to jump in the water as soon as possible. There are wire mesh storage boxes up here – under a little glass roof on the life side – for your robe and towel, you just have to remember exactly where you stashed it. Down in Minerva, there are numbered hooks around the walls. I left my robe and glasses in a box on the opposite side from the Rotunda stairs, prolonging my time in the cool fresh air a little more than I wanted, and almost jumped in, losing feeling in my feet. I have to say, it’s glorious up here. It’s lovely warm water, the sun was shining – too much, and there’s nowhere to hide from it – and you get rooftop views of the city and of the hills all around. You don’t really realise how Bath is sitting in a dip until you see green wooded hills swooping up on all sides. The 15th century Abbey is just up the road and you’ll occasionally see people on the tower tour looking across, oblivious to being stared back at. The massage jet up here is pointed correctly at your neck, the east side of the pool is all bubble jets and my only fault is that this pool is fairly tiny, about 12m per side, and has a lot of people in it. Pleasant as it is, if you’re looking to relax, Minerva’s probably going to do a better job.

I’d forgotten there was a sauna until I heard someone in the bubble jets say the word, so after I’d enjoyed the rooftop views for an hour, I went down one flight of stairs to the wellness suite. I do have dim memories of this and I was surprised that I didn’t find anything I remembered. It turns out that the old wellness suite I visited a decade or so ago got a bit worn and rather than repair or replace, they ripped the whole thing out and replaced it with something much more modern. There’s an infrared sauna where you sit in front of light panels that radiate heat directly into your bones; there are two steam rooms both with steam too thick to appreciate the Roman theme in one and the Georgian garden theme in the other; there’s an ice room that’s somehow also so thick with steam I went in there with my arms held out in front of me like a zombie; there’s a series of experience showers, where the experience seems to be either a big warm rainfall shower or a cold shower, with colourful LEDs in the ceiling above them; and there’s a galaxy-themed relax room with heated tiled loungers, dark walls with tiny twinkling lights everywhere and a screen playing on repeat a journey through the solar system. It all feels smaller than the more open-plan old suite which had four round glass-sided steam “pods”, each supported by a “mushroom” similar to the ones supporting the ceiling over the Minerva bath. I suppose having a mix of steam rooms, sauna, relax room and ice room is an improvement on four slightly different steam rooms. I appreciate the Roman and Georgian theming in the new ones, the pillars and carvings in the former and the illuminated windows and tiled armchairs in the latter but you can’t see a lot of them through the steam.

My only major issue is the time. You get two hours plus time to shower and change, which I naturally used to stay in a bit longer, saving the hair-wash for when I got home. The reasoning behind no phones or cameras isn’t privacy, it’s that you can’t relax properly when you’re worrying about phones or photos but I would argue it’s a lot less relaxing to have a clock glaring at you from every angle, ticking down your precious two hours. That said, even I was more or less ready to go after two hours. The rooftop pool is nice but there’s only so long I can sit in the same square pool with the sun trying to burn out my eyeballs, surrounded by a lot of people. I didn’t expect to prefer Minerva but again, there’s only so long I can spend in a pool that feels slightly like people are trying to avoid it. And there’s only so long I can sit in steam rooms and saunas, although I know plenty of people could spend their whole two hours just in the Wellness Suite.

You unlock your locker by locating the same locking panel – I don’t know if there’s a “check your locker number” machine around but every bath in Budapest has one and a few in Iceland too, since the electronic wristbands don’t come with the locker number stamped on them – and then change in the double-sided cubicle. When you go out, you dump your towel and robe in the big laundry baskets by the turnstile, use your wristband to unlock the turnstile by first touching it to the open panel and then placing it in the little bowl that opens up underneath and last of all, someone will unlock your pouch and release your phone. I sort of wish I’d smuggled in my GoPro as I once did at Aqua Sana but there I could take it out discreetly in various empty rooms and take photos without disturbing anyone. There’s no way you’d get a moment’s privacy at Thermae Spa, and that’s fine, it just means a blog post with no pictures to illustrate it.