Membership

The recurring fee is taken in eleven payments, one a month. The first is taken on the day you join, together with the joining fee; the remaining ten are taken on the first working day of each following month. The twelfth month of the term carries no payment at all. It is the month in which the membership is renewed, transferred or ends, and holding it clear means a renewal is never charged twice in the same four weeks.

So a CURRENT membership beginning on 14 March is billed €450 and €195 on 14 March, then €195 on the first working day of April through to the first working day of January: eleven payments, €2 145 of recurring fee, and February free of payment before the term renews on 14 March. MERIDIAN is the same shape at €365 a month and €4 015 a year; SOURCE at €690 a month and €7 590 a year.

Payment is by direct debit from a euro account or by card held on file. A payment that fails is retried once, seven days later, and the membership is suspended rather than cancelled if the second attempt fails — the gate stops reading the card and nothing else happens until we have spoken. A suspension lifted inside sixty days costs nothing to lift; after sixty days the term is treated as ended under the cancellation terms below.

A membership freezes for two months a year at CURRENT, three at MERIDIAN and four at SOURCE. A freeze is taken in whole calendar months, with a minimum of one month, and is asked for in writing to [email protected] at least fourteen days before the month begins.

While a membership is frozen the recurring fee is not taken and the term extends by the same number of months, so a twelve-month term with two frozen months ends fourteen months after it began. The joining fee is untouched. The card stops reading at the gate for those months, and a frozen member who wants a single day inside the freeze buys a day pass at €95 like anyone else.

Two things a freeze does not do, and they are the two people usually ask about. It does not pause treatment credit: credit runs with the membership year, not with the months you were here, so a MERIDIAN year with three frozen months still has to spend its €600 inside the twelve calendar months. And it does not release the place: a frozen membership is one of the nine hundred for as long as it is frozen, which is why the freeze is capped at all.

A membership transfers once in its term, to one named person, for a transfer fee of €250. The receiving person has to be accepted in the ordinary way, because the cap and the waiting list exist; acceptance takes about five working days and is a formality unless the membership is SOURCE.

On transfer the joining fee is not charged again — that is the whole value of the transfer, and at SOURCE it is worth €2 400. The remaining monthly payments pass to the new member at the same figure for the rest of the term, and renewal after that is at the published figure of the day. Treatment credit transfers at its remaining value. The class allowance resets to the tier's monthly figure on the day of transfer and does not carry a part-month across.

A SOURCE membership has two named adults and transfers only with both replaced together, by two adults at one address. Children under sixteen at the receiving address are included as they would be at the start of a term. Guest days transfer at the number remaining, not at the full annual number.

Inside fourteen days of joining and before any use of the estate, a membership is cancelled in writing and the joining fee and every payment taken are returned in full within ten working days.

Inside fourteen days but after using the estate, the joining fee is retained and €95 is charged for each day used — the day-pass figure, applied honestly rather than as a penalty. The balance of anything taken is returned. A treatment taken in those days is charged at the member price you paid, not the published one.

After fourteen days the term runs to its end. It can be ended early on three months' written notice, and the three remaining payments of that notice are taken; nothing beyond them is. A membership ended this way does not pay a joining fee again if it is restarted inside twelve months.

There is one ending outside all of that. On written notice of a change that makes use impossible for six months or more — a move of residence beyond one hundred and fifty kilometres, or a change in health — the term ends at the end of the following month, no notice payments are taken, and any unspent treatment credit is returned as credit against a future term rather than lost. We ask for one document that shows the change and nothing else.

Nine hundred is 1 715 m² of water surface and fourteen treatment rooms divided by a busy Saturday, with the eighty-eight keys taken out first. It is a hard figure. When it is reached, membership is a waiting list ordered by the date of the enquiry, and the list moves as memberships end, transfer out or are not renewed — between twenty and forty places across the three tiers in a year, on the pattern we expect.

Sixty at SOURCE is a different arithmetic. SOURCE holds two named adults, a pair of loungers on the main terrace until midday, two hours of court time a day and first refusal on two MIRANTE seats. The courts are open sixteen hours a day, which is forty-eight court-hours across the three of them; MIRANTE has forty-two seats and serves five nights a week. Sixty memberships is the figure at which a fourteen-day booking window still finds those things free when a member reaches for them, and above it a benefit quietly becomes a lottery.

A place on either list is free to hold and is held by name and date, not by deposit. You are told your position when you join the list and again whenever it changes by five places or more.

Treatment credit is €600 a year at MERIDIAN and €1 800 at SOURCE. It is drawn in any amount against anything on the treatment menu — the eighteen treatments at 25, 50, 80 and 110 minutes — and it is drawn before the tier's percentage reduction is applied, so a €220 treatment at SOURCE takes €220 off the credit and the 20 per cent applies to whatever you pay beyond it.

Credit runs with the membership year. At renewal, up to a quarter of the year's credit carries into the next year: €150 of €600 at MERIDIAN, €450 of €1 800 at SOURCE. Carried credit is used inside the first three months of the new year and is drawn before the new year's credit. Credit beyond that quarter lapses at renewal.

Credit is not money. It is not refunded, not paid out and not transferred to another person except on a transfer of the whole membership, where it passes at its remaining value. The one exception is the change-of-circumstance ending above, where unspent credit is returned as credit against a future term.

CURRENT carries no credit. Its mechanism is the 10 per cent reduction, which has no annual limit and applies on every treatment taken in the forty-four weeks the tier holds.

CURRENT does not include 1 to 31 August, or 24 December to 2 January. On those days the terraces, the circuit and the treatment rooms are held for the people staying in the eighty-eight keys, who have paid for them in a room rate.

That is forty-three days, and the tier is priced as the forty-four weeks it actually is. A CURRENT member who wants a day inside them buys a day pass outside July and August, or a summer pass for the four months; and the price of a summer pass is credited against the joining fee if the membership is upgraded within thirty days of it ending.

MERIDIAN and SOURCE hold every day of the year. In July and August they are counted against the sixty member admissions a day, which is the only limit that applies to them: a day that reaches sixty is announced to members by 18:00 the evening before, and the following day's sixty open at the same moment.

CURRENT and MERIDIAN are one named adult. The card is read against a photograph at the gate and is not lent; a card presented by someone else is kept at the desk and returned to the member.

SOURCE is two named adults at one address, plus their children under sixteen. Either adult uses the membership alone. A third adult at the same address takes CURRENT with the joining fee waived, for as long as the SOURCE membership runs.

Sixteen is the age for the training floor. Fourteen and fifteen use the Cardio zone and the two studios with an adult in the room. Under fourteen are on the children's pool at 0.5 m and in the estate programme, and are counted as half a guest day when they come as a guest.

A term renews automatically for twelve months unless it is ended on the terms above. We write sixty days before renewal with the figure for the coming year and the date of the first payment.

A recurring fee is held for the whole term and can only change at renewal. A change of more than 6 per cent gives you thirty days from that letter to end the membership at the renewal date with no notice payments. A joining fee is paid once and never again while the membership runs continuously.

A tier changes at renewal in either direction with no new joining fee. Moving up mid-term is allowed at any point: the joining-fee difference and the monthly difference apply from the following month, and the term keeps its original dates. Moving down happens at renewal only.

Phones are used for a camera nowhere on the water terraces, in the spa or in the changing rooms. Everywhere else on the estate they are yours.

Shoes come off at both studio doors and swimwear is worn in every body of water, including the cold plunge at 12 °C. A class door closes at the start time because both studios are entered past the instructor.

A membership may be ended by us for conduct that makes the place worse for other people, with the unused part of the year's fee returned. It has not happened yet and we expect to keep writing that sentence.