The spa
Eighteen treatments, four lengths
Twenty-five minutes treats one region. Fifty treats a whole body or a whole face. Eighty treats a body and then a region. A hundred and ten is a ritual, and every ritual uses water.
- Treatments
- 18
- Rooms
- 14
- Hours
- 09:00–21:00
- Last booking
- 19:30
How to read this menu
Four lengths, and a reason for each
Nothing on this list is a shorter version of something longer. The four durations are four different pieces of work.
A 25-minute treatment is one region at full pressure — a lower back, a pair of legs, a face after three days of wind. It is booked on the morning, it starts on the minute, and it is the treatment most often taken twice in a week.
Fifty minutes is a whole body or a whole face with time to finish properly. Eighty is a whole body and then one region taken further, which is why the 80-minute versions are not simply the 50-minute ones stretched. A hundred and ten minutes is a ritual: heat first, then water, then the table, then the rest room, in that order and without leaving the suite of rooms.
Treatments are given in fourteen rooms — nine single, three double, one wet room opening onto the hammam, and one long room with its own brine bath. Nine of the eighteen treatments can be given in a double room for two people at the same time; the two written for couples are priced for two and the rest are priced per person.
Prices below are indicative, in euros, and include service. The figure is confirmed when the treatment is booked, and the therapist will tell you at the end of the health questionnaire if what you have booked is the wrong treatment for you — in which case it is changed at the desk and not charged twice.
Pedra, 110 minutes
On the heated marble
The platform is one piece of marble, 3.2 m across, heated to 40 °C from underneath, and the dome above it is pierced with forty-one star lights. The acoustics are the reason nothing is played in here: the reverberation time is about four seconds, so copper on marble and water on stone are the only sounds the room handles well.
Pedra uses all of it. Fifteen minutes lying on the warm stone before anything is done at all, a black-soap cleanse left on for five, then the mitt — which is harder than most guests expect and is meant to be — and then the foam, poured in sheets from a copper bowl held high. The scrub takes off what four days of salt put on. The fifty minutes of oil afterwards land differently on skin that has just been through that.
- Given in the wet room that opens straight onto the hammam, so the whole 110 minutes happens behind one door.
- Swimwear is laid out for you; the mitt and the soap are included and the mitt is yours to take.
- Better on the second or third day of a stay than the first — the scrub is not what you want on skin that caught the sun yesterday.
- Two of the three double rooms open onto the same wet corridor, which is how O Longo a Dois is run.
- Length
- 110 minutes
- Platform
- 3.2 m marble at 40 °C
- Price
- €295, indicative
- Age
- 18 and over
Before and after
Thirty minutes before, twenty after
Arrive thirty minutes before the time on your booking. That half hour is the questionnaire, the changing room, a shower and a glass of water, and it exists because a treatment that starts late still ends when it was always going to end — the room behind you is booked.
The twenty minutes after are in the rest room: eight daybeds in oatmeal linen facing the pines, blankets, water, infusions, and no clock on the wall. For the three rituals that twenty minutes is written into the 110 and charged inside the price. For a 50- or 80-minute treatment it is simply there, and you can stay in it as long as the room has a bed free.
- A locker, robe, slippers and two towels are laid out under your name; the towels are changed as often as you ask.
- Service is included in every price on this menu, so nothing is added at the end.
- Treatments taken by guests holding a reservation go to the room account. Members and pass holders settle at the desk.
- Bring nothing. Phones go in the locker and the desk will find you if you are expecting a call.
Booking, changing and cancelling
The four questions the desk is asked most, answered as numbers.
Treatments open 60 days ahead for guests holding a room reservation and 30 days ahead for members and pass holders. Bookings are taken at the spa desk and by email, and the desk works 08:30 to 21:00.
The three rituals and the five double-room slots are the first things to go in July and August; the 25-minute treatments are usually available the same morning, and Salgado and Sol are deliberately kept for same-day booking.
A place on the Long Circuit is separate from a treatment unless you have booked O Longo or O Longo a Dois, which hold it for you. Otherwise circuit places open at 08:00 on the previous day — forty a day, twenty in each rotation.
A treatment cancelled or moved inside 24 hours of its start time is charged in full. Outside 24 hours there is nothing to pay and no reason needed.
Arriving late shortens the treatment rather than moving it: the therapist will give you what is left of the hour and the price does not change, because the room after yours belongs to someone else.
If the questionnaire means the treatment you booked is the wrong one, the desk changes it to one that fits and charges for that. If nothing on the menu fits, the booking is cancelled at no charge whenever that happens, including inside the 24 hours.
Treatments are 18 and over, with two exceptions: Salgado, the 25-minute facial, and Pernas, the 25-minute cold leg treatment. Both are open to 14 to 17 year olds with a parent in the room for the whole appointment, and both are given with the unscented base oil.
Children under 14 have the Shallows at 30 °C, the Long Water, and the Athletic Club's own programme. The heat rooms, the Cold Well and the circuit are 16 and over without exception, and that number is held at the door rather than at the desk.
A locker, a robe, slippers and two towels per person, laid out before you arrive. Swimwear is provided for the four body treatments and the three rituals, all of which are given in a wet room.
Oils are blended on the estate from cistus, rosemary, lavender and maritime pine resin, and an unscented sweet-almond base is kept for every treatment on the menu. There is a nut-free base too; the questionnaire asks, and if it has been missed, say so on the table.
The retail shelf at the desk carries the five oils and the two gels used in these treatments, in the same formulation and the same bottles the therapists use.
Book a treatment, or ask the spa desk
Treatments are booked with your stay, by email, or at the desk from 08:30. Tell us the length you want rather than the name if you are not sure — twenty-five minutes on one region is more use than fifty spent deciding.