Salt Room
A brick vault, a small steam room, a cold tap, and two benches. There is no treatment list, no therapist, and nothing at all to book.
What is down there
The cellar was where the chandler kept rope and salt. It is now a tiled steam room that takes six people, a cold tap fed from the spring under the quay, and a bench room with a jug of water and a stack of towels.
The steam runs at about forty-five degrees with a high salt content, which is gentler than a dry sauna and easier to sit in for twenty minutes. The cold tap comes out at roughly ten degrees all year. Most people do three rounds and stop.
Nobody signs you in, nobody hands you a robe, and there is no charge. Take a towel from the rack at the top of the stairs and go down.
07:00 to 22:00, every day. Cleaned between 15:00 and 15:30.
From 20:00. The steam room is a silent room at all times.
Six in the steam, four on the benches. If it is full, wait upstairs with a coffee.
Over twelve only, with an adult, and not in the steam for more than five minutes.
When to use it
Early morning is the best time. The vault holds its heat overnight, the room is empty before eight, and it sets up the day better than a second coffee.
The other good moment is the hour before dinner, particularly if you have been walking the city all afternoon. Twenty minutes down there and the evening feels completely different.
Do not use it after a long night out. If you have been drinking, take the night counter in the galley instead and come down in the morning. Heat and alcohol are a genuinely bad combination and staff will ask you to leave.
Shower before you enter, keep phones upstairs, and no glass past the cellar door. Everything else is common sense.