Ooh, I do love a sauna. I hadn’t had one for ten years but discovered, to my delight, that there was one attached to the village gym near where I’m currently staying.
This took me back, as it’s very like the one in a village near where I used to live. That had a steam room – first time I’d ever encountered such a thing – and I used to enjoy it after crawling on the treadmill and putting my legs where my arms were meant to be on the Heath-Robinson gym equipment.
As with this new place, the steam room was really attached to the swimming pool. I’m not a great swimmer and tend to eschew the practice. I can do a decent amount of lengths, but swim like a bairn, rarely departing from a breast or back stroke, you know, the ones where you don’t have to put your face in the water.
But, here, I just waddle round the side of the pool and into, first, the steam room and, then, the sauna. After each, I take a very brief cold shower. It feels great because your body’s so hot, it takes a good few seconds before the cold hits you. That’s when I bale out.
I’m surprised I can take a sauna as I’m usually not good with heat. But I force myself to stay the full 20 minutes recommended as a maximum for amateurs. I like the wooden interiors and the sweating, and the sizzling “shish” when you put more water on the coals (electric).
It can be disconcerting to feel your fast-beating heart, but you focus on calming it down with breathing, which becomes meditative. Most of the time here, I’ve been the only one in but, twice, there’s been another person and we’ve made pleasant conversation.
I don’t know if you’re meant to talk but, anyway, have little time for those Scandi-style regulations about what you’re meant to wear, do and say (or not). Whenever I meet anyone now, anywhere, I talk them into submission, which would surprise anyone who knew me in the past. I used to be famous for being relatively silent and, indeed, still would be in large groups, which I tend to avoid.
In the city, I sometimes go weeks – literally – without a face-to-face conversation with anyone. It’s not what I want, but it’s the way it is. So, when I get the chance, I blabber away.
In the sauna, we’ve discussed the weather, city life, work, schooldays, health and chippies. I should say there’s also a jacuzzi by the pool, which I tried for only the second time in my life, getting it all wrong, standing in the bit where your seated feet are supposed to go and unaware you were supposed to press a button for the bubbles.
It was quite pleasant and, again, fairly meditative but, of course, you don’t sweat or feel challenged, as you do in the sauna. I consulted Dr Google to see if saunas are good for the health, and opinion seemed mixed (nothing bad but not a cure-all either). But I can’t see how you can go wrong, taking a bit of time out from the outside world in a little wooden space with a lot of hot air – not all of it mine.
