Casa de Baños and El Patio

Getting warm again

This isn't a spa in the usual sense of the word. It has a cypress sauna, a cold plunge, a room where wet things dry and a walled garden to sit in afterwards, which suits most people coming off a day on the hill.

All of it comes with the room, and none of it is booked or paid for in advance.

Lower floor

The sauna

Built in 1979 at the quiet end of the lower corridor, lined and benched in cypress that has gone the colour of dark honey. It seats ten on two levels, and it is hot in the Finnish way, with the stove run at about eighty degrees and a ladle and bucket there for anyone to use.

Towels are on the shelf by the door and swimwear is worn. There is one changing room with lockers, and a bench outside the door where people sit between rounds in companionable silence.

Open15:00 to 21:00, daily
Seats10
Temperatureabout 80 degrees
Towelsprovided, by the door
Swimwearworn
Ageover 16, or with an adult

Lower floor

The cold plunge

A square stone tank, deep enough to stand chest-high in, fed straight from the same spring that supplies the kitchen taps. It is neither heated nor chilled. In August it sits around four degrees and in February around eleven, and you notice the difference at once.

A handrail and two steps lead in. Go in slowly, breathe out, and don't stay in to prove a point; staff would sooner see you out after fifteen seconds than light-headed on a slate floor.

Wherebeside the sauna door
Waterspring-fed, untreated, cold
Depthchest-high, two steps in
Openwith the sauna
Aloneplease do not, after 20:00

Ground floor

The drying room

Next to the back door, where the ski racks are. Warm air runs through a slatted cupboard from four in the afternoon until midnight, which is long enough to dry a pair of leather boots and more than long enough for gloves and a shell.

Every rack is numbered to a room. Put your things on your own number and they will be dry by breakfast. Skis and boards stand in the rack by the door, waxed by the porter on request in the evening.

Openall hours, keypad on the door
Warm air16:00 to midnight
Racksone per room, numbered
Waxingask the evening porter
Boot warmerseight, first come

Behind the kitchen

El Patio

A walled garden on the sheltered side of the building, laid out in the fifties when the kitchen needed herbs and never changed since. Stone walls on three sides take the wind out of the air, so it can be fifteen degrees in there on a day when the terrace is unusable.

Six benches, two apple trees that were old when the current owners arrived, and a long bed of rosemary, thyme and sage that the kitchen cuts from every morning. Guests come to read, and nothing is served in the garden, deliberately.

Opendaylight hours, year round
Shelterstone wall on three sides
Seatssix benches
Servicenone, bring your own cup
Dogson a lead

Quiet hours

The lower corridor is kept quiet from three in the afternoon. Telephones are left in the changing room. If a group books out the sauna hour for a birthday, a note goes up at the top of the stair that morning so nobody walks down into a party they did not want.

If you are not well

Heat and cold water are hard on a body that is already working. If you are pregnant, have a heart condition, are recovering from altitude or have simply had a difficult day, the sauna won't cure it and the plunge is a bad idea. Ask at the desk and somebody will tell you whether to leave it for a day.

Walking instead

If none of this appeals, the lenga trail starts four hundred metres from the gate and climbs for an hour to a bench with a view over the whole of the lake. In our experience that does most of what a spa is supposed to do.

Trails from the door