Country hotel spas

It seems like the latest trend in new spas – now that every shiny identikit urban hotel has shoehorned one into the basement – is small country hotels gluing on an extension or remodeling a back room to fit in at minimum a therapy room, and in some cases a fuller range of spa facilities. So while the two main spa choices (and marketing angles) were 1) shopping/partying city-break with the girls (a la MacDonald Hotels) or 2) stately home isolation (a la Thoresby Hall), there is now a third – elegant, upgraded hotels in rural destinations where, for example, you can go walking and then wind down with a massage, or one partner can go and do scary things on mountain bikes while the other gets wrapped in mud or seaweed. This seems like a positive development; presumably it creates/preserves local jobs, provides good options for people who might otherwise take gas-guzzling short flights abroad (unless of course they're the really evil types who take internal UK flights), and encourages visitors in the British rural economy to spend money locally. All Good.


The highest-profile example of this trend in the North seems to be Verbena Spa at the Feversham Arms in the insanely cute Yorkshire village of Helmsley. The news that started me writing this post was a press release (complete with horrible punctuation errors) about the Swan, a converted seventeenth-century alehouse in Newby Bridge, on tip of Lake Windermere. You can tell the release was written for and probably by southerners – it doesn't mention the name of the village at all, just the Lake. Ho hum. But the hotel – where I'm pretty sure I've stopped for a brew, years ago, and which seems to have benefited from a major facelift – looks lovely and well-suited for short breaks, especially since (unlike Helmsley) it would be easy to do by public transport from Manchester. Some of these places say 'spa' when they mean treatment rooms offering massages, facials, wraps etc, but the Swan does have a gym, pool, sauna and steam room too. Not quite competition for Verbena's full battery of 'monsoon showers', ice room, juice bar and saunarium, but probably enough for a relaxing weekend away. I'm sure I had one of those, once upon a time...

Massage and the recession

I was chatting to a friend today about the impacts of the recession on her massage business - and they've not been good. Some regular customers have, she says, cut their visits - from weekly to monthly, or monthly to every two months. Some have fallen away altogether, and new clients are not appearing at a fast enough rate to replace them. Customers she's spoken to about it have either been hit directly by job losses or are simply afraid to spend what money they do have. Tough times, and a pity because with the additional stress of the current economic situation it's probably the time when many of us most need a good kneading.

What's this blog about?

Manchestermassages is simply a personal review site for the various massage therapists and spas I've been to in the Manchester area over the years. It's intended to be a little resource for people looking to find a really good massage in Manchester, whether as part of a day out from the world, luxuriating in a spa, or just as a one-off massage session to iron out some tired muscles.
My benchmark massage experience is always, unless a miracle occurs, going to be Jutika at Manchester Buddhist Centre's Bodywise. I've been going to Jutika when the world (and my back pain) get too much (and budgets allow) for around ten years now and she's never let me down. She also taught the introductory massage course at Bodywise which I attended about 10 years ago, which not only gave me some basic massage skills which various friends and lovers have benefited from over the years but also taught me something about how to appreciate a good massage – what techniques to look out for, and how to ask for a better experience.
So she's the subject of my first review.
Otherwise, anyone with comments, other massage experiences, links and tips, information on spa and massage courses, guides or directories or anything else they want to add is very welcome to use the comments function (as are any massage providers wishing to invite me for complementary treatments in return for impartial and unbiased reviews!!)