SEAside saunas were just a dream until 2018. Now anyone walking along the beach at one of Britain’s premier resorts is likely to come across a converted horse trailer offering heat and steam as a refuge from gloomy skies and icy winds.
According to the British Sauna Society, there are now 70 such saunas operating in Britain, mostly on beaches or lakes, driven by the growth of wild swimming and healthy living.
But if the customers have sweated, so have the owners. Finding land, dealing with slow-moving municipalities and the rough seas have all taken their toll. And as the number of saunas increases, local opposition arises.
Construction plans last week a sauna by the ponds in Hampstead Heath in London was met with objections from swimmers there. Mark Lamb, the founder of Wild Sauna Community Interest Company, had offered to spend £100,000 to install a sauna at the ponds and run it for free – the first of fifty such projects – but the Mixed Pond Association said that the plans were “unworkable”. and the sauna would “change the atmosphere”.
There has been a similar backlash against a proposal for installing a mobile sauna in a beach car park in St Andrews. More than 20 objections from local people have been submitted to Fife Council, including Judith Harding of the Royal Burgh of St Andrews Community Council, who said the sauna would “spoil the view over the sea”.
Meanwhile, another sauna owner in Bournemouth withdrew plans for a sauna on Avon beach after the local council objected. Sam Glyn-Jones and his Finnish wife had hoped to repeat the success of the saltwater sauna they set up on Sandbanks beach in Poole two years ago.
Glyn-Jones, a surf instructor who also runs a nonprofit for surfing, yoga and cold-water swimming, is optimistic about the rejection. “We were offered a piece of land and we were like, ‘We’ll take what we can get,’ but when we went through we felt like it might block the view,” he said.
They have submitted a new application, which would replace six beach huts of the many already on Avon beach, and he believes it is much more likely to succeed. “We are in a group chat with other mobile sauna operators – there are more than 100 of us. From what I’ve seen in the group chat, it’s been really hard for other people.”
Although archaeologists have discovered it evidence of Neolithic sweatboxes in places like Marden Henge in Wiltshire, Britain doesn’t have much of a sauna heritage.
But in 2018, Liz Watson and her friend Katie Bracher set up a pop-up sauna at the Brighton Fringe Festival. It proved so popular that Brighton Council asked them to stay, and now Watson runs Beach Box Spa, a business that inspired the seaside sauna movement.
“The council has really supported us,” Watson said. “We have created our own Brighton community who are very interested in saunas – they know all the terminology about beating leaves and Pour on, and it’s part of the beach psyche.”
The sole converted horse trailer has been joined by four others, gathered around a campfire on the pebbles, along with two plunge pools and an ice bath, and 14 staff. Sitting by the campfire, Watson, a former homeopath, talks passionately about the bond that connects people loyalthe Finnish word for steam evaporating from a hot stove, and the importance of introducing sauna rituals from the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, such as leaf tapping – brushing and tapping the skin with twigs and leaves – and Pour ona German practice of waving a towel to move the steam.
But despite the support, things still feel more uncertain than Watson would like. “I only receive short permits from the municipality. I have to apply again and again,” she says. “It’s a big pain. If anyone wants to give me a building on a beach, I’m here.
Working on a beach comes with many challenges. “Fetching water on a beach is harder than it sounds,” she says. It collects rainwater from a miniature golf course next door, and all the lights are battery powered and usually charged by on-site solar panels when the weather is good. “Sometimes I have to go home and do it there,” she says. “There’s always something.”
That includes the English Channel. “When we had Storm Eunice (in 2022) we were lucky because there is a big row of pebbles in front of us that absorbed the water,” she says. “It ended up all the way on the road – we were on a small island.”
Tim Smithen runs Steam Punk Sauna in Dover, a business the tattoo artist set up after interviewing a customer who told him about the new wave of mobile saunas. He decided that nearby Folkestone beach was ideal.
“It took a year of talking to Folkestone council before nothing happened,” he says. The Folkestone Port Authority stepped in and found him a space for a number of months, but now Steam Punk Sauna is in Dover.
Smithen says it was “really hard work.” He had “wind and rain burns on my face” as he stood outside his sauna, and gale force winds blew through the door. “During Hurricane Ciaran, rocks flew out of the sea.”
Was it all worth it? “No! Well… there’s no other feeling than going inside a wood-fired sauna. The world is just what’s around you. You’re in your own cave in 90 degree heat. It’s just perfect. You can go to bed with the heating on, but there’s nothing like going into the sauna in your swimwear.”