“Warm first, then cold, then nothing at all for ten minutes. People want to reverse it because the cold feels like the achievement. The ten minutes of nothing is the treatment.” Inès Bouchard, Head Of Spa
The salt circuit at Hibotel runs warm, hot, cold, rest. People arrive having read about the cold and want to start there, and the first thing the spa team does is talk them out of it.
The warm room is fifteen minutes and it is the part everybody wants to skip. It is also the part that makes the rest of it work, because the cold does nothing measurable to a body that has not been warm for long enough first.
What The Ten Minutes Are For
After the plunge you are sent to a room with no telephone, no music and a window that faces the sea. Nobody comes in. The temptation is to treat that as the gap between the treatment and lunch, which is exactly backwards.
The circuit runs four times a day and never more than six people at once, which is the only way the rest room stays a rest room.
Marc Devaux
General ManagerTwenty-two years on the headland, started as a night porter, and knows every pipe in the building by the sound it makes.
Comment By Anders Holm
We were there the week before you closed in 2024 and the whole place already felt like it was bracing for something. Now I understand what. Worth every euro of the shoulder rate.
ReplyComment By Priya Raghunathan
Seconded. We asked at the desk what happens in January and got a twenty-minute answer from somebody who clearly loves the building.
ReplyComment By Daniel Okonkwo
The detail about re-pointing the sea wall by hand is the kind of thing nobody would ever put in a brochure. Thank you for writing it down.
Reply