Spa Day with Sarah

On the 20th of July I went to Ye Olde Bell Spa with my friend Sarah. It's only about fifteen minutes drive from her house, so I went to hers to begin with and we had a piece of homemade banana bread before heading out. We arrived about 10.20 and got registered and everything, before getting into the spa around 10.45. I will say that I thought the checking in process was a bit slow and meant that we had less time in the spa, which I did complain about via email afterwards. But! Not to worry. 

Sarah has been to the spa before with her sister, and was eager to go again. My mum bought me a voucher for my birthday which covered half the price, and I paid the rest. We booked it only a few weeks ago. I think it is a bit overpriced but you do get a two course meal included. As part of the check in we ordered drinks to go with the food, so decided to have a glass of wine each and some pudding too. 

The changing rooms are of course lovely, and we each got a robe and flip flops. I got a bigger size robe and it was fine on me. In the spa area, there are two saunas and two steam rooms, of different heats, and some foot spas, and a bunch of loungers. There is also a SNOW shower, which was ace, and a shower walk, which was showers of different temperatures and types of water fall, and which I really liked. 

Then the pool! It has steps down, and on either side of that there's seats with jets around them. Then the pool goes outside, where there are more seats and jets and different types of stuff. The pool is supposedly 36 degrees, but when we first got in, it was much cooler than that. But they had had a problem and they were heating it up, and by the afternoon it was much warmer. 

We moved around between different areas and the pool, chatting all the while. It was nice to have a proper catch up with Sarah. It was warm enough in the pool outside for me to be comfortable in it. There's tons of seats outside. One of the steam rooms has a really cool contraption which adds water to the hot stones to make steam, it was fun to watch!

At 12.30 we went to have lunch in the cafe. It only has about 20 seats, and I think they do limit the number of people in the spa so it doesn't end up too full. I had a lovely glass of French rose. For starter I had spring green soup, which was really delicious. It came with the nicest bread, too. For main course I had risotto, which I wouldn't usually choose but it was the only vegetarian choice. It was nice though. For dessert I had macerated strawberries with chocolate soil, which was yummy! 

We finishedl unch about 1.15 and went back into the spa. Sarah sat on a lounger outside for a bit and read her book and I mooched about in the outside part of the pool. Then it started chucking it down so everyone moved inside but Sarah and I went outside because it's not like you can get any wetter, is it?! It was lovely! 

We got dressed at 2.30 and were back at Sarah's by 3pm. Her dad brought her little girl back, and it was nice to see her as I haven't seen her since January! 

My nail polish was a Max Factor one, it was a lovely colour. In all, Ye Olde Bell Spa is really fancy and I really enjoyed it. I felt really relaxed and pampered - four hours is a good amount of time to loll about and do nothing. I do think it is pricy, but I am lucky to have had a gift voucher and I did really enjoy myself!

Ye Olde Bell Spa is at the back of the pub and hotel in this purpose built building

Yes we were excited to be there! 

In the bar/reception area. The restaurant was behind the bar in the door to the right

This is the pool, you can see where it leads to the outside. To left of the doorway there is a drinks station which had water and three different types of tea. I don't really like tea but I did enjoy a couple of cups of green tea

You can see more of the outside space here. There are four heated stone loungers and some other ones

My gorgeous nail polish, I love a navy blue!

In the corridor - I do feel like every aspect of this place has been carefully thought about which adds to the fancy feeling

Here's Sarah at lunchtime! I could go for a glass of that wine right now

My soup

And my risotto, it had pesto on the side

And my dessert

Here's the outside space. The large window behind is one of the steam rooms. The pool was so lovely but I did enjoy the heat rooms too. The hottest steam room especially was amazing!

Sarah took this of me - I'm standing in a thing that had loads of little jets in which was great

For more perspective - Sarah took this from her lounger!