By poolside, you book in for your treatments at their reception and you're given a dressing gown, towel and slippers. Here is also where you also register your car for parking. We was told about the lockers, they need £1 that is refundable and told that we could wait poolside for our therapist to come & get us.
I was asked if I had ever heard or used of Decleor products before and Jane told me she was using a ready made blend of marjoram and grapefruit and I will smell the citrus burst through, sounded delightful for me as I'm a citrus lover. Jane asked me what pressure I liked and I said quite hard, there's too many knots in my shoulders to be worked out. I carry tension in my shoulders and especially on my right side. She worked on my back and shoulders quite a bit before moving onto my neck and again onto my shoulders. I cannot complain about her technique one bit, she listened and worked those knots out.
After the massage had finished Jane said for me to join her outside when I am ready, she left me to relax in the moment and get dressed again. Whilst getting dressed I noticed it was the Decléor SLIM EFFECT Baume de Massage Drainant tub she was using, if only I knew someone who could give me a massage I'd love a tub of this. As we left to walk back down the stairs to the changing rooms, to make a decision on what we should do now, the time was 10:25am, that massage wasn't 30 minutes as stated. - Disappointment.
We decided to go dress in our gym clothes and go see where we was going to have lunch at midday. We was instructed it would be in the Bar and everything was arranged for that, by chance we was introduced to our waiter Haydn (sp). Onto the gym, while watching Jeremy Kyle we used the Elliptical Machine. The gym is quite small and compact with a couple of each piece of equipment, after a mini workout we really needed to get back onto our personal gym memberships.
Our Lunch
Starters - Soup of the day with bread rolls, which was spicy tomato soup and the bread rolls were soft. The soup you could tell was fresh and just blended up.
Main - (L) Battered Haddock Fillet w/ beer batter, scraps, picked onion, minted mushy peas, lemon, tartar sauce, double cooked chips.
(S) Marriott Beef Burger w/ Barbers Cheddar, Little Gem, Beef Tomato, Red Onion, Gherkin, Fries
Dessert - (L) Chocolate Fondu, Kumquat and Orange Sorbet. (S) Rhubarb Crumble w/ Custard.
Haydn was very attentive and polite, we left him a tip because his service was so lovely, he would never leave the plates on the table for long or your glass empty. He will double check to make sure the food was nice and if we enjoyed it. Nobody rushed us & we was there for about 3 hours just eating our food, drinking and talking.
After heading back downstairs, we was just relaxed and ready to nap. The pool area had got really busy as it was late afternoon, so we passed on that so we decided to shower and leave.
We had to wait around to get back into the changing areas as there was a large party who had come in for afternoon tea so we couldn't get into our lockers, they left the changing room in a state, wet towels on the floor and benches. Shoes lying around, clothes, it was a sight. Simone grabbed plastic bag on her hands to move them into the laundry bin just so we had a place to sit. Ellie -the therapist- ended up coming in and another hotel guest raised the point that Simone had to clean up in there and that their should be someone in here quicker, Ellie commented she was only the therapist not a cleaner but she cleaned up and disinfected the floors etc. Women sometimes can be more messy than you'd expect. This is, in no way a reflection on the hotel / spa itself because they can't be held responsible for how people act but it just goes to show some women just have no consideration for other guest or the staff when they go out.
It was a nice needed day to just chill and be pampered. Get out and do something nice, it's a clean and nice hotel. Simone made the point in saying it would probably be a nice place to go to on a weekday as it wouldn't get as busy. Weekends you've got more people coming for tea parties, they hold functions/ wedding receptions and parties there as well as there's the spa packages so you can imagine how packed on a weekend especially a Saturday it gets.
I'd give it a rating of about 7½/10. The food and service made up for a lot. Can't complain about my actual massage as I was left feeling nice, the allocated time wasn't as stated online that is our only complaint. All in all thanks to the Marriott for having us and to the PR for allowing me to have a nice day out with one of my besties.
Photo credits : Myself x Simone
*PR /read disclaimer
