Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
If anyone had suggested to me that I might enjoy sitting in water in the open air on a rooftop on an early May evening in England I might have thought they were having a laugh, but that’s exactly what I found myself doing last weekend.
In fairness, the rooftop was spectacular, part of a new building in the centre of Bath called the Thermae Spa, all glass-sheathed around the ubiquitous Bath stone. And the water was warm, not like the Mediterranean Sea or a bath, but somewhere in between. Just right, in fact, soothing and comfortable, and not deep. You could sit or squat or float around with your head above the water in perfect comfort.
Quite still like meerkats
All round us there were lots of other people, all enjoying the late sun. There were couples, groups of friends and workmates taking the water after a long day. Everyone was just chilling out, chatting or cuddling or quite still like meerkats, their eyes closed and their heads facing the sun, in perfect contentment.
Apparently the Thermae Spa is very popular, not just as an attraction for tourists like us, but for locals too. It’s not expensive, and you either book ahead or queue up. You take a swimming costume, and they hand you a towel, robe and slippers. Once you’ve changed you can head up to the roof and get in the water. It’s lovely. If I lived in Bath I’d certainly go there regularly.
A vast open-air jacuzzi
Apparently it’s popular all year round. One of the attendants told me that it doesn’t matter whether it’s midsummer or in the depth of winter. It’s just as popular in extreme weather, even while it’s snowing, and especially at night. The views over the roofs of Bath are wonderful, and it’s a calm and soothing experience.
I was wondering while I was there how the Romans would probably have loved this modern Council-built and –run establishment, and how all those generations of visitors to Bath to drink and bathe in the water would have liked it. I thought of all those Jane Austin films with their over-dressed and carefully-polite people taking their clothes off and socialising in the pool up on the roof. The water is clean but has a definite smell of its own, and I did feel very pleasantly relaxed. Especially when the bubbles started. It was like being in a vast open-air jacuzzi.
Open a huge curved glass door
The building has a lot of high-tech water treatments on the other levels. You can have various therapies and massages, and there’s a whole floor of steam rooms. These are large glass structures, with stone benches all round and different-flavoured steam in each. You open a huge curved glass door and step in, like a sauna, but round and made of glass. It felt like being in a combination of a tropical hothouse and one of those glass squash courts that became popular when they were televising the sport.
Those of us who booked were also able to go to the restaurant, which you attended in your gown and damp swimming costume. It was slightly surreal but very civilised. And I’m sure it was good for me because I felt wonderful afterwards. What a wonderful way to modernise a resource that has become old-fashioned, making it new and exciting. Can we please have something like this on the Wight?
Warm for fun, hot for washing and cold to drink
We do have a complex relationship with water. We’re an island, so we should know. We ourselves are made up almost entirely of water, although not as much as a cucumber, which is almost 99%, apparently. We love water when it’s warm for fun, hot for washing and cold to drink, and luckily nature or technology provides us with each of these. We’re not so happy when the water is the wrong temperature though.
We also love water for pleasure, kayaking or white-water rafting, or sailing or swimming. Technology provides us with the ability to scuba-dive or wander through glass corridors in aquariums with sharks swimming overhead. I’ve been abroad where they have huge water parks, with slides and flumes and other rides which are immensely popular. As long as the climate is warm.
So many months of ghastly weather
It’s such a shame that we can’t count on good weather in this country. I’m enjoying the lovely countryside at the moment now we’re moving towards summer. I keep thinking it’s such a waste having to go through so many months of ghastly weather before everything becomes pleasant, and how soon it gets horrible and cold again.
I’ve always thought that the weather is very inconvenient. You just can’t rely on it. Ideally I’d like to live somewhere that’s hot and dry all year round, but where it also rains for exactly one hour at night, say one o’clock in the morning. I wouldn’t mind if it rained for two hours if it wanted to. That way you could go out without having to have boots and raincoats and umbrellas available, and if you fancied walking in the rain you could just wait until it started.
I can’t imagine I would miss the cold rain and freezing winds, the puddles and mud and frozen fingers and toes of winter, but maybe I would. Just a bit. Otherwise I’d never get the chance to go back to Thermae Spa in Bath and watch the snow fall. While sitting in water. On the roof. At night.
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