Relaxation
Feb. 24th, 2019 09:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livThis week I took a couple of days off work, mainly so I could organize a treat for jack.
jack had asked for a spa day for his birthday. It took a while to actually make it happen, but that was the main point of the break.
Saturday we had a lovely chilled weekend day, after mine andjack's usual Friday evening date. I had a date with ghoti_mhic_uait in which we watched a match between the top two women's Aussie Rules Football teams. I didn't quite follow all the play, which is somewhat complicated, but it was fun. And later on cjwatson came over and taught jack Terraforming Mars and we had a really satisfying 3p game.
Then Sunday was the long-promised spa day. I know nothing about spas and was really flailing trying to work out what to book, so I asked DW andaldabra came up with the helpful recommendation of Aqua Sana in Thetford Forest. I was a bit nervous about it, but I liked it better than I expected and jack liked it a lot, which was the main point.
Part of my nervousness was that I was somewhat expecting a spa to be about the 'buy more products or you fail at femininity' thing which I find incredibly difficult to deal with. Which wasn't the case at all; it wasn't aggressively feminine, and I would guess about a quarter of the customers were male. And I chose not to have a massage or beauty treatment so I didn't have to deal with any of that. It was a little bit woo, but again, not aggressively so. The main part of the experience was that you spend the day in a complex of stuff designed to be relaxing. So there was a warm, bubbly outdoor pool, a bunch of comfy furniture, and a number of heated rooms with different sensory experiences. There was a standard sauna, a number of scented steam rooms, a couple of warm dry rooms, and a "meditation" room at ambient temperature with pretty lights. I don't much love saunas or perfume, but given the whole thing was really unpressured I was able to take some pleasure in the sensory experiences. And I certainly find hot tubs relaxing and it turned out I quite liked the warm dry rooms, especially the "Greek" themed one which was scented with herbs rather than perfumes. Apart from the pool, there were two outdoor sections, a "Japanese" garden and a small lawn surrounded by the forest. It was unseasonally warm for February, so I did get to take some breaks from the manufactured experiences to feel fresh air and hear real bird song and smell real greenery. They encourage guests to talk quietly in a "library" voice; some of the rooms had background music but quiet enough not to be too intrusive. So as an auditory experience it wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad either. I brought a book and enjoyed sitting reading and chatting tojack in between the experience rooms.
The thing I really didn't like about it was sitting around in wet clothes all day. The etiquette is that you wear a bathing costume, plus ideally a bathrobe for the more public areas. There were towels available but not enough to get properly dry. I think if I go again I'll save the hot tub til last. And curling up in piles of blankets, some on beds, some on comfy chairs, some in rather cool wicker pods, is somewhat less pleasant when the blankets are damp from other people dripping on them. We were even expected to eat lunch (which was rather dietetic; for me, low-cal food doesn't really feel like a treat) in our wet swimming costumes and bath robes. I don't know if it's just me, if most people find it luxurious to lounge around in a swimming costume all day, but I found myself wishing for those whole body hot air blowers you get at theme parks that have splash rides.
The upside of that dress code was that I do find it comforting to be in a context where people get to exist in their real bodies. It's not, as part of me feared, a place for impossibly beautiful people to show off, it's a place where all body shapes, older and younger, fatter and thinner, are just a normal part of human existence. I know in a lot of cultures nudity would be acceptable for hot tubs and saunas and so on, but even with everybody wearing bathing costumes it felt like a body-positive environment. There were single gender changing rooms at the start to remove your everyday clothes, which would be unhelpful to some people, but once you were in the main complex, everything, including the toilets and showers, was gender neutral.
I did come out of it feeling quite relaxed, more so than I would have done if I'd just spent the day at home reading. We then moved on to stay in a room above one of those amazing untouched-for-centuries pubs, The Pykkerell. I had hoped to avoid driving home when we were completely chilled out, but that wasn't entirely successful, because although the village was nearer to the spa than Cambridge, getting there involved a certain amount of driving on tiny narrow country roads as it was getting dark. Still,jack coped admirably.
The second day was more the kind of thing I find relaxing. Also, even with the accommodation costs, quite a lot cheaper than a spa day, so it's probably fortunate that I prefer it! We made no particular plans for the day; the only deadline was that we had to be up and dressed by 9 for a hearty full English breakfast in the amazing pub. We basically stuck a pin in Thetford Forest and drove there, and walked around in the trees for a bit. Actually in the forest rather than a walled garden, and wearing warm dry clothes rather than a wet swimming costume and robe. Then we dropped down into Thetford where we wandered around, played Pokémon a bit, had lunch in a rather sweet greasy spoon café, and learned about some of the history. Apparently the last Maharajah of the Punjab ended up pensioned there as an English country squire, and was also the first Sikh to settle in Britain. And Thomas Paine grew up there.
The main tourist site is a ruined abbey. There's about a quarter of the main arch of the church still standing, and just that fragment is quite breathtaking. I ended up feeling a bit sad about religious violence, to think that a building that beautiful was smashed up because of sectarianism. Also even though the connection between Thetford and the Sikh world is presented in a somewhat positive way, the background is horrendous colonialist atrocities. And the novel I took to the spa was about the Civil War, and unlike most fiction set in that period it doesn't take a side, rather it conveys how horrible it was for ordinary people who didn't have any particular strong feelings about the monarchy or which flavour of Christianity should be the national religion. But even when it's uncomfortable history, I find learning things much more relaxing than being in a place with deliberately low levels of intellectual stimulation.
Day three we headed down to Bury St Edmunds, a place I'm fond of but hadn't visited for years. The abbey gardens are great, especially in the spring sunshine. And Bury's excellent charity shops didn't let us down: we found an everyday coat for me and a fancy wool long coat for Jack. Since I was last there they've closed down the clock museum and moved the clocks to the main local history museum, so we dropped by there which I wouldn't otherwise have bothered with. They have an absolutely magnificent scale model of the museum made out of Lego, and when I asked about it they said it was part of a project running at the cathedral. So we went in to the cathedral too: they are raising money by taking donations to add a brick to a fantastically detailed Lego replica of the building, which is really cool. I also discovered another new thing since I was last in Bury: they have restored the décor of the cathedral to a reconstruction of its pre-Reformation state, so there's blue and red and gold everywhere. That doesn't mitigate the human suffering of the Reformation and all the resulting internecine wars, but it does make me feel slightly better about the destruction of beautiful buildings and art.
Finally we made up for the overly healthy food at the spa by indulging in afternoon tea at The Angel. They provided interesting veggie alternatives for the sandwiches, really top quality scones, and a lovely atmosphere; I found the cake selection slightly too sweet, but it was a pretty good example of the afternoon tea genre. And we returned to Cambridge in time for me to run my Hagaddah reading group, which is going really well. One of the participants said, can I ask about eschatology? So it was that kind of a discussion.
Since we got back we've played a couple more games of Terraforming Mars, which we're borrowing from OSOs while they're away, and one of Scythe which we're still hooked on. And I think we both feel better for a break specifically dedicated to relaxing.
jack. jack had asked for a spa day for his birthday. It took a while to actually make it happen, but that was the main point of the break. Saturday we had a lovely chilled weekend day, after mine and
jack's usual Friday evening date. I had a date with ghoti_mhic_uait in which we watched a match between the top two women's Aussie Rules Football teams. I didn't quite follow all the play, which is somewhat complicated, but it was fun. And later on cjwatson came over and taught jack Terraforming Mars and we had a really satisfying 3p game.Then Sunday was the long-promised spa day. I know nothing about spas and was really flailing trying to work out what to book, so I asked DW and
aldabra came up with the helpful recommendation of Aqua Sana in Thetford Forest. I was a bit nervous about it, but I liked it better than I expected and jack liked it a lot, which was the main point. Part of my nervousness was that I was somewhat expecting a spa to be about the 'buy more products or you fail at femininity' thing which I find incredibly difficult to deal with. Which wasn't the case at all; it wasn't aggressively feminine, and I would guess about a quarter of the customers were male. And I chose not to have a massage or beauty treatment so I didn't have to deal with any of that. It was a little bit woo, but again, not aggressively so. The main part of the experience was that you spend the day in a complex of stuff designed to be relaxing. So there was a warm, bubbly outdoor pool, a bunch of comfy furniture, and a number of heated rooms with different sensory experiences. There was a standard sauna, a number of scented steam rooms, a couple of warm dry rooms, and a "meditation" room at ambient temperature with pretty lights. I don't much love saunas or perfume, but given the whole thing was really unpressured I was able to take some pleasure in the sensory experiences. And I certainly find hot tubs relaxing and it turned out I quite liked the warm dry rooms, especially the "Greek" themed one which was scented with herbs rather than perfumes. Apart from the pool, there were two outdoor sections, a "Japanese" garden and a small lawn surrounded by the forest. It was unseasonally warm for February, so I did get to take some breaks from the manufactured experiences to feel fresh air and hear real bird song and smell real greenery. They encourage guests to talk quietly in a "library" voice; some of the rooms had background music but quiet enough not to be too intrusive. So as an auditory experience it wasn't perfect, but wasn't bad either. I brought a book and enjoyed sitting reading and chatting to
jack in between the experience rooms. The thing I really didn't like about it was sitting around in wet clothes all day. The etiquette is that you wear a bathing costume, plus ideally a bathrobe for the more public areas. There were towels available but not enough to get properly dry. I think if I go again I'll save the hot tub til last. And curling up in piles of blankets, some on beds, some on comfy chairs, some in rather cool wicker pods, is somewhat less pleasant when the blankets are damp from other people dripping on them. We were even expected to eat lunch (which was rather dietetic; for me, low-cal food doesn't really feel like a treat) in our wet swimming costumes and bath robes. I don't know if it's just me, if most people find it luxurious to lounge around in a swimming costume all day, but I found myself wishing for those whole body hot air blowers you get at theme parks that have splash rides.
The upside of that dress code was that I do find it comforting to be in a context where people get to exist in their real bodies. It's not, as part of me feared, a place for impossibly beautiful people to show off, it's a place where all body shapes, older and younger, fatter and thinner, are just a normal part of human existence. I know in a lot of cultures nudity would be acceptable for hot tubs and saunas and so on, but even with everybody wearing bathing costumes it felt like a body-positive environment. There were single gender changing rooms at the start to remove your everyday clothes, which would be unhelpful to some people, but once you were in the main complex, everything, including the toilets and showers, was gender neutral.
I did come out of it feeling quite relaxed, more so than I would have done if I'd just spent the day at home reading. We then moved on to stay in a room above one of those amazing untouched-for-centuries pubs, The Pykkerell. I had hoped to avoid driving home when we were completely chilled out, but that wasn't entirely successful, because although the village was nearer to the spa than Cambridge, getting there involved a certain amount of driving on tiny narrow country roads as it was getting dark. Still,
jack coped admirably.The second day was more the kind of thing I find relaxing. Also, even with the accommodation costs, quite a lot cheaper than a spa day, so it's probably fortunate that I prefer it! We made no particular plans for the day; the only deadline was that we had to be up and dressed by 9 for a hearty full English breakfast in the amazing pub. We basically stuck a pin in Thetford Forest and drove there, and walked around in the trees for a bit. Actually in the forest rather than a walled garden, and wearing warm dry clothes rather than a wet swimming costume and robe. Then we dropped down into Thetford where we wandered around, played Pokémon a bit, had lunch in a rather sweet greasy spoon café, and learned about some of the history. Apparently the last Maharajah of the Punjab ended up pensioned there as an English country squire, and was also the first Sikh to settle in Britain. And Thomas Paine grew up there.
The main tourist site is a ruined abbey. There's about a quarter of the main arch of the church still standing, and just that fragment is quite breathtaking. I ended up feeling a bit sad about religious violence, to think that a building that beautiful was smashed up because of sectarianism. Also even though the connection between Thetford and the Sikh world is presented in a somewhat positive way, the background is horrendous colonialist atrocities. And the novel I took to the spa was about the Civil War, and unlike most fiction set in that period it doesn't take a side, rather it conveys how horrible it was for ordinary people who didn't have any particular strong feelings about the monarchy or which flavour of Christianity should be the national religion. But even when it's uncomfortable history, I find learning things much more relaxing than being in a place with deliberately low levels of intellectual stimulation.
Day three we headed down to Bury St Edmunds, a place I'm fond of but hadn't visited for years. The abbey gardens are great, especially in the spring sunshine. And Bury's excellent charity shops didn't let us down: we found an everyday coat for me and a fancy wool long coat for Jack. Since I was last there they've closed down the clock museum and moved the clocks to the main local history museum, so we dropped by there which I wouldn't otherwise have bothered with. They have an absolutely magnificent scale model of the museum made out of Lego, and when I asked about it they said it was part of a project running at the cathedral. So we went in to the cathedral too: they are raising money by taking donations to add a brick to a fantastically detailed Lego replica of the building, which is really cool. I also discovered another new thing since I was last in Bury: they have restored the décor of the cathedral to a reconstruction of its pre-Reformation state, so there's blue and red and gold everywhere. That doesn't mitigate the human suffering of the Reformation and all the resulting internecine wars, but it does make me feel slightly better about the destruction of beautiful buildings and art.
Finally we made up for the overly healthy food at the spa by indulging in afternoon tea at The Angel. They provided interesting veggie alternatives for the sandwiches, really top quality scones, and a lovely atmosphere; I found the cake selection slightly too sweet, but it was a pretty good example of the afternoon tea genre. And we returned to Cambridge in time for me to run my Hagaddah reading group, which is going really well. One of the participants said, can I ask about eschatology? So it was that kind of a discussion.
Since we got back we've played a couple more games of Terraforming Mars, which we're borrowing from OSOs while they're away, and one of Scythe which we're still hooked on. And I think we both feel better for a break specifically dedicated to relaxing.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-25 12:01 am (UTC)I’m frommsuffolk and my sister lives in bury. She had her wedding reception in the angel. I am vegan and got mostly lettuce. Went out in town and bought chips as soon as was polite to do so! 😹
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-25 12:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-25 08:54 am (UTC)Is this the game?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/718560/Scythe_Digital_Edition/
(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-25 10:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-25 03:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-02-25 04:12 pm (UTC)