Sauna in York: an honest guide

Search for a sauna in York and you'll get three types of result. Hotel spas, where the sauna is one warm room next to a treatment list. Gym saunas, bolted onto the changing rooms, usually half warm and half full. And mobile saunas, converted trailers and horseboxes that turn up somewhere for a weekend and move on.

Nothing wrong with any of them. But none of them are set up for the full thing. Contrast therapy is heat, cold and rest, done in rounds. To do it properly you need a sauna that actually gets to 90°C, a plunge that's kept cold all day rather than a cold shower down the corridor, somewhere decent to sit in between, and enough room that you're not queuing.

That's not a dig at York, to be fair. Most British cities are the same. In the Nordics the sauna is just part of life. Over here it got treated as a hotel extra, and you can feel it.

So we're doing something about it. Northern Ritual builds outdoor sites with three saunas, three ice plunges and three jacuzzis, set in the trees, booked online so nobody queues. A York site is coming soon. We're looking at sites now and we'll announce the location once it's signed.

Why York? Because the demand's already here. The wild swimmers, the runners, the rugby and rowing lot, the people driving out of the city every weekend to find exactly this. And because we're Yorkshire. It'd be daft to go anywhere else first.

Until we open, honest advice: if you want heat this month, a hotel spa day is your most reliable bet, and the mobile saunas that pass through are run by people who care about it. If you want the full circuit, register your interest and you'll be first to know when we open.

York's getting a proper sauna site. Not long now.