It feels like playing truant.
I’m sitting on the Eurostar at 6.30 on a Friday morning, fleeing the country and escaping the daily grind.
The train plunges into the dark of the Channel Tunnel, emerging to views of rural France flitting past the window.
I’m on the way to Rotterdam, the Netherlands’ second city and, in particular, Elysium spa. Or as it is described on its website (elysium.nl), ‘The Ultimate Wellness Experience’.
Over here in the UK, the emphasis at what we call a spa is on ‘pampering’, and often advertised with images of prone, middle-aged women swaddled in white towelling robes with cucumber slices for eyes.
There’s a treatment for everything from your toenails to your scalp. Doubtless there’s a swimming pool and maybe a small, pine box in the corner of a room or two dedicated to sauna-ing.
To up the ante and give an added impression of a change of pace or treat to self, they often exist in grand country houses, and so if you’ve yearned to stroll around grounds designed by Capability Wotsit in a dressing gown, you can tick it off your bucket list.
In Europe, however, prepare yourself for palaces of steam, heat and water.
Andrew Welch, spokesman for British Naturism, visited Elysium spa in Rotterdam (above), where nudity is mandatory
Treatments are available, but the focus is on a more holistic wellness, with indoor and outdoor areas littered with numerous saunas, hot tubs, plunge and swimming pools.
Another massive change from the scene in the UK is that nudity at Elysium and a great many other spas, is mandatory.
It’s always amusing when I turn up at the reception for such places. The Englishman, checking in.
The receptionist’s face falls slightly, there’s a cough and a querulous, ‘You do know it’s nude, don’t you?’
I laugh and tell them that’s why I’m here.
They do insist, however, on guests sitting on a towel and having something on their feet as they walk around – flip-flops or sliders – and a bundle that includes these items, plus a towelling robe (returnable at the end, but you can take the footwear home with you) can be hired.
Locals tend to bring their own.
Prudery, and the (sadly) growing influence of less-liberated nations (America – I’m looking at you) means that most places these days also have times when costumes are allowed.
Elysium spa describes itself as ‘The Ultimate Wellness Experience’
In the Netherlands, they are called ‘Badkledingdagen’ which, even without stopping off at Google Translate, sounds like something to be avoided.
The spas are not ‘naturist’ places – the nudity is simply a means to an end.
The most effective way (the only way?) to get the right results from bothering to have a sauna in the first place is to allow it to affect the whole of your body.
You wouldn’t have a bath with your underwear on.
In practice – especially in February, when I visited – most guests wander around in their dressing gowns, only disrobing (literally) when they enter a sauna or pool.
What really sets these places apart from the UK experience is the sheer number of facilities.
The buildings themselves are not necessarily huge, nor need to be surrounded by manicured lawns, topiary hedges or classical statuary to attract clients.
They’re everywhere too and, it seems to me, treated by locals as we would a leisure centre or gym.
They’re packed – not to uncomfortable levels—but I mean popular. And to all age groups. Though it has to be said, in my late fifties, I’m often one of the older people spa-ing.
Elysium, about a 30-minute Uber ride north of Rotterdam, is one of the bigger ones.
Being handed a map on entry gives an instant clue to the fact that orientation is needed.
There are no less than 28 different saunas and steam rooms, four swimming pools, a few restrooms with squashy-mattressed chaise-longues and countless hot tubs, plunge pools and shower areas, plus a very good restaurant.
The atmosphere is calm and peaceful. The surroundings seem to invite low voices, sauntering and consideration for others.
Elysium features ’28 different saunas and steam rooms, four swimming pools, a few restrooms with squashy-mattressed chaise-longues and countless hot tubs, plunge pools and shower areas, plus a very good restaurant’
The atmosphere at Elysium is ‘calm and peaceful’, says Andrew
No need for signs around the pools stating ‘no bombing’.
In most of the saunas, silence is required. Twenty-eight saunas? Doesn’t it get boring? If you think you’ve-seen-one-sauna-you’ve-seen-them-all, then think again.
You can certainly expunge the image of the pine box in the corner, although some are the ‘traditional’ pine-clad Finnish variety.
Differences include: heat intensity, ranging from 50 to 90C; scent – calming lavender was a good one; and ambience, by way of a variety of decor and use of lighting.
Part of the indoor area is fashioned like a cave, with saunas and warm sit-in pools appearing to have been hewn from bare rock.
In the indoor pool, you swim under a canopy of leaves.
Outside, some saunas have large windows so you can swelter with views of ponds and lawns.
The surroundings at Elysium ‘seem to invite low voices, sauntering and consideration for others’, says Andrew
Andrew takes in the Rotterdam sights
There’s even a beach area with sunbeds, and plenty of other places dotted around in which to sit and relax.
Before you start saving to be able to afford it, let me tell you that a full-day’s access to all this costs around £40.00.
Back in Rotterdam, feeling unprecedentedly clean, I check in to the nhow (pronounced ‘now’) hotel overlooking the water – in Rotterdam it’s pretty much impossible not to be overlooking water -and enjoyed commanding views of the city – skyscrapers, waterways and bridges – from the bustling Elvy Gastrobar. Later, I tuck in to a steak at the well-known, pan-Netherlands restaurant Loetje, gazing at the lights shimmering on the rippling water of the Rijnhaven.
I take a self-guided walking tour in sun-infused but crisp air past marinas packed with bobbing boats from every maritime age, and lunched halfway up the 185-metre/606ft Euromast, scanning the city to the horizon.
Throngs of people shrug off their winter blues in the sunshine at cafés in Het Park, hold on tightly to children and bags in the snaking trams and bustle around the busy shopping streets and the architecturally stunning Markthal, packed with eateries laid out street-market style, and where it seemed impossible not to find a style of food to tuck into from every corner of the world.
If you’ve never experienced a nude spa (and combined it with an exciting city break), Dutch courage is not needed. It’s very easy to just immerse yourself in it.
Andrew Welch is a spokesman for British Naturism (bn.org.uk), which runs a variety of events throughout the year, indoors and outdoors.
