Danesfield Spa
Just round the corner from Marlow-on-Thames in Buckinghamshire and set within 65 acres of estate land, Danesfield has just been named Most Excellent Spa at the Condé Nast Johansens Awards for Excellence 2003. There are eight treatment rooms offering a range of over 50 treatments, including reiki and reflexology. The spa includes a 20m indoor blue mosaic tiled ozone-cleansed swimming pool, surrounded by hand-painted murals, a gym, a zen studio and male and female relaxation rooms (both with their own steam rooms and saunas). The hotel is offering a two-night new year Spa Rejuvenation and Detoxification break which includes accommodation, a mud wrap or a detoxifying algae wrap, and an aromatherapy massage.
Price: £295pp.
Contact: Danesfield House Hotel and Spa. 01628 891010.
Heywood Mount Hotel and Spa
Come back bronzed after a couple of days at a British winter resort. Positioned away from the noise of a holiday town but within a short walk of Tenby's award-winning sandy beaches, coastline, shops and fishing harbour, the Heywood Mount Hotel in Pembrokeshire has recently been refurbished and now has 17 ensuite bedrooms plus a new spa leisure suite. It has a Welsh Tourist Board four-star rating and is AA and RAC three-star approved. There is good availability during January and hotel guests have complementary use of the spa and leisure suite - the only extra is the solarium at £3.50 per session. Facilities include an indoor pool, jacuzzi, sauna, solarium and a fitness suite.
Price: £99pp for two nights' dinner and B&B, or £150 for four nights' B&B, based on two people sharing a double/twin room.
Contact: Heywood Mount Hotel and Spa, Heywood Lane, Tenby, Pembrokeshire. 01834 842087.
Bath Spa Hotel
The 18th century five-star Bath Spa Hotel is an elegantly informal mansion, within a 10-minute walk of the city's historic centre. Set in seven acres of landscaped grounds, it has 98 bedrooms and seven suites. Facilities include a choice of restaurants and bars, a tennis court, a croquet lawn and a hairdressing salon. Guests get free use of the Vital Health and Leisure Spa, with heated indoor swimming pool, state of the art gymnasium, sauna and beauty treatment rooms.
Price: Throughout January and February, a one-night New Year Reviver break costs £171pp midweek and £191 per person at weekends, including accommodation and breakfast, facial, full-body massage, pedicure and free gift.
Contact: The Bath Spa Hotel, Bath, Somerset. 0870-400 8222.
Crieff Hydro Holiday Park
Set in a picturesque 900-acre Perthshire highland estate, an hour from both Edinburgh and Glasgow, the Crieff Hydro offers a huge variety of indoor and outdoor facilities and activities including a Victorian Spa with heated indoor pool and relaxation area, spa bath, steam room and sauna. For those wanting to sweat it, there are the more traditional sports of badminton, squash and tennis, football, table tennis, aerobics, mountain biking and a riding school.
Price: Self-catering accommodation sleeping up to eight in wooden chalets for seven nights in January costs £354.
Contact: Blakes Holiday Parks and Villages, 08700 70 80 90.
Seaham Hall
This £20m oriental spa on the County Durham coast has just opened, claiming to be "the best spa in western Europe". At 44,000 sq ft, bigger than the 19-room hotel itself, the spa consists of four interconnecting, feng shui-designed pavilions; a 20m ozone-cleansed swimming pool; 19 treatment rooms (four of them doubles) where light, heat, sound and visuals can be personally controlled; a two-person hot mud chamber, a hydrotherapy suite with a 24-person steam bath; a Dead sea flotation tank; two outdoor hot tubs and eight vibrating individually-controlled sound-wave therapy chairs. A dancing and exercise studio offers Thai kick-boxing and Tai Chi. There is also a Thai brasserie featuring authentic dishes.
Price: Throughout January, a two-night midweek Escape package (available Monday-Thursday inclusive) is £290pp, including breakfast, a four-course dinner, and two hour-long spa treatments from a choice of massages, body wraps, body polishes and cleansing treatments.
Contact: Seaham Hall, Seaham, Co. Durham. 0191 516 1400.
Myhotel Chelsea
The newly opened Myhotel in the heart of Chelsea is billed as the place where the ultra chic meets the utterly decadent. The hotel has 45 guest rooms, two function suites, a bar, a pamper room and conservatory. They not only offer body massages, facials and the rather exciting exotic rose healing body wrap (a soothing treatment which promises to leave you smelling of roses) but also promise to attend to your mind, with meditation sessions, palmists, tarot readers and psychics available on request. All rooms have been designed along feng shui lines to maintain a relaxing and calm environment, and if you get peckish and need respite from all this spiritualism, Mybar serves a good selection of teas and traditional British teatime treats: crumpets, Eccles cakes, finger sandwiches, chocolate eclairs and fairy cakes.
Price: A double room start at £185 or take advantage of the offer of overnight accommodation in a double room plus Jinja's signature Ginger Salt and Citrus scrub for each person at for £229 (available until March 31).
Contact: Myhotel Chelsea, 35 Ixworth Place, Chelsea, London, SW3 3QX. 020 7225 7500.
One Spa
Next door to the Sheraton Hotel in Edinburgh is the amazing One Spa. They offer purifying programmes starting from £35, with use of a Marine Hydrotherapy Bath, Detoxifying Aromatherapy Massage, Salt and Oil Scrub, mud chamber, scented steam or a sauna enhanced with coloured fibreoptic lights. The outdoor hydropool, cut into the rooftop, can be accessed by swimming from inside the building, and has spectacular views of Edinburgh's skyline. The five-star, 260-bedroom hotel, located in the centre of Edinburgh, has a three AA rosette grill room restaurant.
Price: From around £180 for a double room per night. Treatments are extra.
Contact: One Spa, Edinburgh. 0131 221 7777. Sheraton reservations, 0131 229 9131.
St Davids Hotel and Spa
You'll begin to relax from the moment you step into St Davids and are welcomed with a refreshing infusion of herbs to soothe your senses, before being eased into a stress-relieving foot bath and an energy point foot massage. Then you have a choice of an Ayurvedic Marma Point massage (exfoliation and massage to boost your energy) or an Optimal Release (exfoliation followed by a "free-flowing life dance massage"). The price includes a lifestyle consultation, use of the hydrotherapy pool, lapping pool, sauna and relaxation areas of the spa, unlimited use of the cardiovascular gymnasium and a full range of spa studio activities. All meals are made from organic and naturally produced foods.
Price: One night's Mind and Body package for two people sharing accommodation in a king bedded room with balcony, and including breakfast, costs £265pp.
Contact: St Davids Hotel and Spa, Cardiff. 020 7483 1898.
Bedford Lodge
Burn off those excess pounds in the surrounds of a four-star country house hotel near to Newmarket Racecourse. Bedford Lodge in Suffolk has a swimming pool, gym, exercise studio sauna, steam room, spa bath and solarium and a range of treatments in its new health spa, The Edge. After all that calorie sapping exercise you can dine in The Orangery restaurant on such delights as marinated terrine, baked red mullet, cannon of lamb and warm baked summer fruits with rosewater syrup and vanilla ice-cream.
Price: A winter weekend costs £105pp - a saving of £45 on the normal price - for two nights' half-board accommodation in January and February. Treatments are extra.
Contact: Classic British Hotels, 0845 070 7090.
Tuckenhay Mill
Nestling in Bow's Creek, a secluded Devon valley, is the awarding-winning Tuckenhay Mill - a collection of cottages and listed buildings with indoor pools and leisure facilities. The 32ft Roman-style pool has a sauna, a steam room, a cool drench shower fed from an underground spring and a separate jacuzzi with hydro jets. The waterfall pool - a 40ft-long sculptured grotto-style pool - features floor and wall massage jets, water volcanoes, water cannons, swim jets, waterfall, in-pool jacuzzi, sauna, steam room and spring-fed showers.
Accommodation ranges from cosy cottages for two to large converted mill houses accommodating up to 11 guests. All 21 cottages and houses have been tastefully decorated, with log fires, exposed beams and other original features.
Price: From £339 per cottage for seven nights in January.
Contact: Inquiries and reservations for Tuckenhay Mill, Totnes, south Devon, must be made through from English Country Cottages, 0870 442 2515.
