Peace ‘n Love and Warmth on the Pier
FIONA MCGARRY
Monday morning: it’s dark, wet and stormy – I can hear the sea roaring in the distance. I have some work with a midday deadline, but my elderly mother has been up half the night as her dog had ‘a bad stomach’, and I promise to help her with her shopping (removing ‘dog biscuits’ and ‘chews’ from her list – surely the culprit). My partner’s hair is standing on end, and he is rubbing his chest – a sure sign that he’s stressed and anxious because of everything he’s agreed to sort out this morning. I ask myself: was it a good idea to book a sauna on the pier for 1pm today? What possessed me?
Monday lunchtime: I’m shivering on the pier in my swimming gear gazing at a large green horsebox with a smoked glass door. It contains wooden benches and a blazing woodstove, sauna stones and a water bucket and ladle. This is Samphire Sauna, brainchild of Zoya Jordan and her friend and business partner Nell Monck. Although we booked tickets for a communal sauna, my friend and I have it all to ourselves today, and as soon as we sit down inside, I start to feel properly warm for the first time in weeks.
It’s not uncomfortably hot; I gradually break into a sweat and then flit outside for a tentative ‘sprinkler’ shower. After a while I become less timid: alternating the heat of the top bench with the bucket-of-cold-water-over-the-head shower. We end up sitting outside on the deckchairs in our sauna hats and bathing gear and eating slices of orange – quite surreal in December, but which we agree makes us both feel rather empowered.
The hour passes astonishingly quickly. It’s a small space – and would be ‘cosy’ with five people – and yet there is a sense of spaciousness as you look out at the sea in front of you. It’s also remarkably calm and soothing: the only sounds are the waves crashing against the pier and receding. The sort of thing you might listen to as a recording to help you zone out, but this is the real deal.
We are unobtrusively but very well looked after by Zoya. She and Nell originally got the idea for Samphire Sauna after encountering a similar idea in the West Country several years ago. They initially set up at ‘The Hub’ near Bodiam and then did some successful pop-ups on the beach in Eastbourne and Bexhill, just as outdoor saunas started to become a ‘thing’.
She’s very pleased with the new location of the sauna on the pier and, as a Hastings resident, she hopes this will be permanent: “I didn’t expect to have such a close connection with the sea here,” she says, “although you’re in the middle of the town, you aren’t really aware of that. You go into a little ‘sauna bubble’. During the winter we’ve obviously had some high tides and a lot of wind and rain, and when you’re in there seeing big waves crashing below you, it’s super life-affirming: watching nature and feeling connected.”
She also tells us how good it is to see people connecting and laughing with each other – even forming new friendships as the sauna starts activating their endorphins: “People come, and they’ll be tired or stressed, but soon they’re opening up and chatting away. It puts you into a different state of mind.”
It’s true, I feel set up for the day afterwards: re-energised, ravenous, and as relaxed as if I’d been on a meditation retreat. We’re already planning our next visit. It would be interesting to come on a sunny day when the sea is calm, or when there are other people – different from the wild, elemental experience we had this time, but not better.
Find out more at samphiresauna.co.uk
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