Brave Heart, Soft Feet
New spas have been springing up in Scotland, helping to soften the rugged land.
By Amanda Ross
In the Spa at Balmoral’s candlelit Relaxation Suite, guests can lie back on blanketed loungers, post-treatment, and leaf through glossy magazines while sipping green tea.
Bathers at the Spa at Turnberry find sanctuary in a pool looking out to the Isle of Arran, across the Irish Sea.
Exfoliating at One Spa-an urban retreat housed inside a blue glass cube above Edinburgh’s Grand Sheraton Hotel.
Inside a massage room at the Balmoral Hotel Spa; candlit lounging at Cameron House.
The ultimate luxury experience at the Spa at Stobo Castle
includes an overnight stay in the Cashmere Suite with its decadent his-and-hers four poster beds and oval limestone bath.
Stobo Castle’s ozone heated swiming pool offers panoramic views of the Peeblesshire countryside.
Golfing or hot-stone therapy at the Westin Turnberry Resort? You decide.
As I doze off in my spa treatment room overlooking picturesque Loch Lomond outside Glasgow, I begin to think heretical thoughts: “Maybe these Scots have a soft touch after all.” The mere mention of Scotland conjures up images of blue face paint and clan warfare—it’s a country
where hot-oil treatment is reserved for invading hordes, not damaged hair. Lately, though, Scotland has been in the middle of a gentler revolution, one where spas are setting up camp beside ancient golf tracks and castle ruins and offering a new pastime to add to the old-world traditions.
Scottish history is palpable at Cameron House: Views of the dramatic peaks of the Highlands frame the 18thcentury baronial manor house that’s been fully retrofitted by England’s upscale De Vere Group. Sweeping changes have kept the Horse & Hound facade intact while turning the interior, with its grey and black plaids, into a darkhued modern riff on all things Highland. Nowhere are the changes more apparent than at the new Spa at the Carrick, which is an almost too-quaint boat ride away, on Loch Lomond, from the main property. The architecture’s modern take on Scotland’s great outdoors features a glass and natural-wood structure overlooking both the water and the attached Carrick golf course, one of the country’s best new Scottish heathland-style tracks. My husband Neal heads to the course while I follow my massage therapist, Morag, down a sleek backlit hall to a room for my Highland “Kur.” I imagine myself a bonnie wee lassie while she begins with an Alpine foot exfoliation using menthol, eucalyptus and lavender oils, followed by a chamomile body scrub and then—with long, deep, kneading strokes—a heavenly massage. Post-treatment, I swaddle myself in a thick Turkish robe, order the honey-and-sage baked figs in the Café Spa and, thanks to the expansive view, take turns gazing at the serene calm of the lake and the notso- serene travails of my husband who’s trying to get out of a strategically placed pot bunker on the 18th hole.
In the car the next morning, we experience our own kind of epic Scottish battle as we argue over how to master the right and left side of the roads. He surrenders—I take the wheel and we head down the western Ayrshire coastline, thankfully getting the hang of it within the hour before turning onto the driveway of the iconic white expanse that is Turnberry. Since its opening in 1906, the 800-acre seaside resort has been synonymous with golf, with its famed Ailsa course serving as a regular venue for the British Open (which it will host again in 2009). The place is so commonly associated with the Great Game that some might argue that opening a spa there is sacrilege. But from the indoor almost- 66-ft pool, I spy the shore’s rocky crags and dunes, the volcanic Ailsa Craig jutting from the Irish Sea and Ireland itself in the distance, and decide to baptize myself here in the spa’s hydrotherapy waters. And I stand converted: A spa setting this gorgeous must have had a little help from above.
Once just a summer retreat for Scottish gentry, Turnberry, with its new spa, now offers respite from the famed Scottish weather anytime of year—it’s July and I spot golfers out the window wearing thick knit caps in defiance of the wind whipping off the sea. I’m happy to ensconce myself downstairs in a treatment room. From the ayurvedic-influenced menu that draws on ancientIndian healing traditions, Louise chooses a massage oil based on my Dosha, or temperament, and tells me that Pittas, like me, prefer their rubdowns “not too hard and not too soft.” My body agrees before my words do, and suddenly I’m asleep under her deft hands. Fearing that this bucolic lord-and-lady experience might make it hard for us to return to our busy urban lives, we leave the west coast and head east to Edinburgh, the country’s capital that manages to seem quaint and bustling at the same time. However, the One Spa at the Sheraton Grand Hotel is far from quaint. One Spa sits juxtaposed against nearby Edinburgh Castle, which famously looms over the city high on Castle Rock. The castle’s history as a noted stronghold contrasts wildly with the peace and serenity of the hotel’s glass-cubed spa. To add to the contrast, One Spa has a modern design so sleek, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it from the street for a contemporary-art gallery. We drop our bags, and as I make my way down the glass walkway from the hotel, I note that if the lights were dimmed and a makeshift bar set up, this room could earn pin money as a hip evening lounge.
Once I’m in my private room, my Time treatment really feels like it’s stopping time—if only for a few hours this afternoon. Karen begins an initial assessment to tailor a program based on what she thinks would benefit me most. Targeting the kink in my neck from shoulderchecking over my right shoulder, she promptly prescribes a hot-stone massage and body wrap, which involves a foot cleansing and a salt-and-oil body exfoliation to kick-start my circulation. Face down on the table, I hear the clinking of glass jars as Karen mixes individually warmed oils with Ayurvedic herbal concentrates before I surrender to the smell of sea water and cloves. She then slathers warm marine algae over my body and wraps me, baby-bunting-like, in warmed linens so the fragrant herbs and oils can penetrate.
Come morning, we head outside Edinburgh to nearby Stobo Castle in Peeblesshire. The wending, circular drive up the hill to the property seems straight out of a Sir Walter Scott novel, but inside the spa, which is attached to the 200-year-old castle, the medieval romance gives way to modern efficiency. The sheer size of the massive castle and its proximity to Edinburgh mean it can easily accommodate day-trippers and hen parties. Stobo’s genius is that it seamlessly handles numbers that would cripple a smaller spa—and once my basic massage begins, I drift off feeling like I am the spa’s only patron.
Back in Edinburgh, on the other side of Castle Rock, respite from our jaunt in the country awaits at the regal Balmoral Hotel. Its Scottish baronial style suggests a gothic castle, while its strategic location makes it appear somehow related to Edinburgh Castle. But a smart, contemporary boutique-hotel interior awaits inside, and I reach the spa by taking an elevator to a subterranean floor. The pool is so ethereally blue that I half wonder if they’ve added food coloring, though I’m assured it’s the mosaic tile and lights. Down here, I’ve left the busy streets behind, and as shoppers and businesspeople traipse 20 feet above me, I ease onto a treatment table for the house specialty—the Kamala, an exhilarating hot herbal face and body treatment with the organic Thai Ytsara line of products. After positioning heated herbal cushions around my body, Nicole applies a warm, deep lemongrass poultice, then follows it with a Royal Thai massage using a mix of acupressure, reflexology and gentle stretching before finishing with a facial using creams redolent of green tea and jasmine.
We’re flying out of Glasgow and at the last minute we decide to add one more stop to our itinerary: Mar Hall Hotel, a scant 10 minutes from the city’s international airport. Our spontaneity is rewarded as our car edges up a grand driveway: We’re met with a gothic monolith straight out of the movies—old, imposing and oozing nobility. Fittingly, the building is the former residence of the Earl of Mar, whose title is one of the oldest in all of Great Britain. Replete with thick limestone walls and 75-year old Quebec oak, it doesn’t immediately conjure up images of modern anything, but a short stroll from the main building sits Scotland’s first Aveda Concept spa. I decide to embrace its contemporary ethos with a Vichy shower. The body elixir starts with a marine salt and flower- and plant-based exfoliation followed by a hydrotherapy massage beneath seven showerheads that washes away any of the remaining tension I harbor over my husband’s driving habits.
Now we’re off to the airport, and as we pass the windswept Lowlands I can’t help but note that Scotland has always been about hardy adventure, mostly in the guise of pitting oneself against the harsh elements of the country. However, my adventure has revealed a gentler, tamer side of the country, discovered without the crutch of a golf club. I’ve been to both coasts, in city and countryside, and I’ve felt firsthand the soft side of the Scots. The best of these new Scottish spas harness the elements and the country’s rich history, distilling both and turning them into a whole new national pastime. I have no doubt these spas will count as traditions in this rugged country, soon to be as venerated as the cask, the club and the caber.
where hot-oil treatment is reserved for invading hordes, not damaged hair. Lately, though, Scotland has been in the middle of a gentler revolution, one where spas are setting up camp beside ancient golf tracks and castle ruins and offering a new pastime to add to the old-world traditions.
Scottish history is palpable at Cameron House: Views of the dramatic peaks of the Highlands frame the 18thcentury baronial manor house that’s been fully retrofitted by England’s upscale De Vere Group. Sweeping changes have kept the Horse & Hound facade intact while turning the interior, with its grey and black plaids, into a darkhued modern riff on all things Highland. Nowhere are the changes more apparent than at the new Spa at the Carrick, which is an almost too-quaint boat ride away, on Loch Lomond, from the main property. The architecture’s modern take on Scotland’s great outdoors features a glass and natural-wood structure overlooking both the water and the attached Carrick golf course, one of the country’s best new Scottish heathland-style tracks. My husband Neal heads to the course while I follow my massage therapist, Morag, down a sleek backlit hall to a room for my Highland “Kur.” I imagine myself a bonnie wee lassie while she begins with an Alpine foot exfoliation using menthol, eucalyptus and lavender oils, followed by a chamomile body scrub and then—with long, deep, kneading strokes—a heavenly massage. Post-treatment, I swaddle myself in a thick Turkish robe, order the honey-and-sage baked figs in the Café Spa and, thanks to the expansive view, take turns gazing at the serene calm of the lake and the notso- serene travails of my husband who’s trying to get out of a strategically placed pot bunker on the 18th hole.
In the car the next morning, we experience our own kind of epic Scottish battle as we argue over how to master the right and left side of the roads. He surrenders—I take the wheel and we head down the western Ayrshire coastline, thankfully getting the hang of it within the hour before turning onto the driveway of the iconic white expanse that is Turnberry. Since its opening in 1906, the 800-acre seaside resort has been synonymous with golf, with its famed Ailsa course serving as a regular venue for the British Open (which it will host again in 2009). The place is so commonly associated with the Great Game that some might argue that opening a spa there is sacrilege. But from the indoor almost- 66-ft pool, I spy the shore’s rocky crags and dunes, the volcanic Ailsa Craig jutting from the Irish Sea and Ireland itself in the distance, and decide to baptize myself here in the spa’s hydrotherapy waters. And I stand converted: A spa setting this gorgeous must have had a little help from above.
Once just a summer retreat for Scottish gentry, Turnberry, with its new spa, now offers respite from the famed Scottish weather anytime of year—it’s July and I spot golfers out the window wearing thick knit caps in defiance of the wind whipping off the sea. I’m happy to ensconce myself downstairs in a treatment room. From the ayurvedic-influenced menu that draws on ancientIndian healing traditions, Louise chooses a massage oil based on my Dosha, or temperament, and tells me that Pittas, like me, prefer their rubdowns “not too hard and not too soft.” My body agrees before my words do, and suddenly I’m asleep under her deft hands. Fearing that this bucolic lord-and-lady experience might make it hard for us to return to our busy urban lives, we leave the west coast and head east to Edinburgh, the country’s capital that manages to seem quaint and bustling at the same time. However, the One Spa at the Sheraton Grand Hotel is far from quaint. One Spa sits juxtaposed against nearby Edinburgh Castle, which famously looms over the city high on Castle Rock. The castle’s history as a noted stronghold contrasts wildly with the peace and serenity of the hotel’s glass-cubed spa. To add to the contrast, One Spa has a modern design so sleek, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it from the street for a contemporary-art gallery. We drop our bags, and as I make my way down the glass walkway from the hotel, I note that if the lights were dimmed and a makeshift bar set up, this room could earn pin money as a hip evening lounge.
Once I’m in my private room, my Time treatment really feels like it’s stopping time—if only for a few hours this afternoon. Karen begins an initial assessment to tailor a program based on what she thinks would benefit me most. Targeting the kink in my neck from shoulderchecking over my right shoulder, she promptly prescribes a hot-stone massage and body wrap, which involves a foot cleansing and a salt-and-oil body exfoliation to kick-start my circulation. Face down on the table, I hear the clinking of glass jars as Karen mixes individually warmed oils with Ayurvedic herbal concentrates before I surrender to the smell of sea water and cloves. She then slathers warm marine algae over my body and wraps me, baby-bunting-like, in warmed linens so the fragrant herbs and oils can penetrate.
Come morning, we head outside Edinburgh to nearby Stobo Castle in Peeblesshire. The wending, circular drive up the hill to the property seems straight out of a Sir Walter Scott novel, but inside the spa, which is attached to the 200-year-old castle, the medieval romance gives way to modern efficiency. The sheer size of the massive castle and its proximity to Edinburgh mean it can easily accommodate day-trippers and hen parties. Stobo’s genius is that it seamlessly handles numbers that would cripple a smaller spa—and once my basic massage begins, I drift off feeling like I am the spa’s only patron.
Back in Edinburgh, on the other side of Castle Rock, respite from our jaunt in the country awaits at the regal Balmoral Hotel. Its Scottish baronial style suggests a gothic castle, while its strategic location makes it appear somehow related to Edinburgh Castle. But a smart, contemporary boutique-hotel interior awaits inside, and I reach the spa by taking an elevator to a subterranean floor. The pool is so ethereally blue that I half wonder if they’ve added food coloring, though I’m assured it’s the mosaic tile and lights. Down here, I’ve left the busy streets behind, and as shoppers and businesspeople traipse 20 feet above me, I ease onto a treatment table for the house specialty—the Kamala, an exhilarating hot herbal face and body treatment with the organic Thai Ytsara line of products. After positioning heated herbal cushions around my body, Nicole applies a warm, deep lemongrass poultice, then follows it with a Royal Thai massage using a mix of acupressure, reflexology and gentle stretching before finishing with a facial using creams redolent of green tea and jasmine.
We’re flying out of Glasgow and at the last minute we decide to add one more stop to our itinerary: Mar Hall Hotel, a scant 10 minutes from the city’s international airport. Our spontaneity is rewarded as our car edges up a grand driveway: We’re met with a gothic monolith straight out of the movies—old, imposing and oozing nobility. Fittingly, the building is the former residence of the Earl of Mar, whose title is one of the oldest in all of Great Britain. Replete with thick limestone walls and 75-year old Quebec oak, it doesn’t immediately conjure up images of modern anything, but a short stroll from the main building sits Scotland’s first Aveda Concept spa. I decide to embrace its contemporary ethos with a Vichy shower. The body elixir starts with a marine salt and flower- and plant-based exfoliation followed by a hydrotherapy massage beneath seven showerheads that washes away any of the remaining tension I harbor over my husband’s driving habits.
Now we’re off to the airport, and as we pass the windswept Lowlands I can’t help but note that Scotland has always been about hardy adventure, mostly in the guise of pitting oneself against the harsh elements of the country. However, my adventure has revealed a gentler, tamer side of the country, discovered without the crutch of a golf club. I’ve been to both coasts, in city and countryside, and I’ve felt firsthand the soft side of the Scots. The best of these new Scottish spas harness the elements and the country’s rich history, distilling both and turning them into a whole new national pastime. I have no doubt these spas will count as traditions in this rugged country, soon to be as venerated as the cask, the club and the caber.
One Spa has a modern design so sleek, you’d be forgiven for mistaking it from the street for a contemporary art gallery.
Featured Spas
Cameron House,
Loch Lomond,
Dunbartonshire,
44-138-975-5565,
devere-hotels.com
The Westin Turnberry Resort,
Turnberry, Ayrshire,
44-165-533-1000,
turnberry.co.uk
One Spa,
Edinburgh,
44-131-221-7777,
onespa.com
Stobo Castle Health Spa,
Stobo, Peeblesshire,
44-172-172-5300,
stobocastle.co.uk
Balmoral Hotel,
Edinburgh,
44-131-556-2414,
thebalmoralhotel.com
Mar Hall Hotel,
Bishopton, Nr. Glasgow,
44-141-812-9999,
marhall.com
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