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Lifestyle Spa Getaway


Stobo Castle, Scottish Borders


Battery I


RECHARGE


H is for health and happiness and – Hooray! – the holidays are over, yelps Charlotte Fairbairn


t’s the Monday after the Monday of the August bank holiday. T e sound of closing trunks is ringing in your ears. Your fi ngers are raw from the stitching on of name-tapes and the


edges of your nerves are jangling because the house looks like a herd of teen-children has swept through it for eight consecutive weeks on a current of high jinks, sleepovers, bright nights and Pony Club camps. T us it was that I found myself at the end of this summer. Son and daughter back at school – and mother worn out. T e house in its post-holiday state glowered at me. T e mirror gave me an answer I did not care for. My sister being in much the same condition, we decided to take ourselves off for a mini-break. A couple of days of rest, where the only demands on your time would come from beauty therapists enquiring after your comfort. Our rest-cure venue of choice was Stobo Castle – an impressive early Gothic fortress in the lap of the Pentland Hills, just outside Peebles. It is Scotland’s only Spa Hotel, one of the founding fathers of the health farm movement, a place confi dent in its ability to deliver wall-to-wall relaxation. T e history of Stobo Castle is long and


varied. Today’s building dates from 1805 when Sir James Murray, Laird of Stobo,


72 FirstEleven Autumn 2011


engaged the services of architects, Archibald and James Elliot. T e Manor, however, is known to be at least 1,500 years old and the Estates have passed through the hands of many of Scotland’s great families, including the Montgomerys of Kinross, who also owned the castle on Loch Leven (Mary Queen of Scots’ fi nal prison). In 1975, the Winyard family bought Stobo, at that time, in a dilapidated state – and set about creating Scotland’s fi rst Health Farm, fi nally opening their doors for business in August 1978. In those early days, Stobo was all about calorie-counted meals, strict regimes – half a grapefruit, carrot juice, rationing. Today, Stobo – under the guidance of Steven Winyard, the son of its founders – takes a gentler, more holistic approach towards health. Now, in the huge spa annexe, there is an ozone pool, a Laconium, an Aroma Room, an Ice Fountain, an Experience Shower. You can be detoxifi ed in the Serailbad Mud Room, in the Secret Garden, the Crystal Steam Room. Yes, you can take part in Yoga, Chi Ball, Aquacise classes, go on guided (or unguided) walks around the estate, swim all day, play tennis, work out in the gym – but you can also opt for a less strenuous break and allow one of the spa’s 120 staff to apply one of the myriad treatments on off er to your face, your back,


The ozone pool in the spa annexe at Stobo Castle


your feet or your whole body. Anna and I booked ourselves into the


hotel’s latest addition, the Cashmere Suite. Huge Italian marquetry beds, state-of-the- art sound/lighting/tv system, a bathroom that the pharaohs would have been proud of. Our drawing room, too, was a temple of luxury and gave out on to its own private terrace with views over immaculately clipped lawns. In the foreground, wagtails danced in their hundreds. In the


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