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Penny From Heaven
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By: Hilary Doling, Issue 38 – Autumn 2009
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(Pennyhill Park Hotel & The Spa - Bagshot, Surrey, England)
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THE ELEGANT PENNYHILL PARK HOTEL & SPA IS A LITTLE PIECE OF PARADISE IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE.
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I arrive late in the day at Pennyhill Park Hotel, but after a long-haul flight from Australia via various other parts of the world, I’m really not sure what time I think it is. Thank goodness that despite its leafy setting, Pennyhill Park is only a short taxi ride from Heathrow. My attention is caught by an elegant red brick building with high, wide windows and an impressive entrance way. I am about to head in that direction when I realise, this isn’t the hotel – it is merely the spa. Yes, this massive and magnificent building is a monument to pure indulgence. No wonder The Spa at Pennyhill Park has been voted England’s leading Spa Resort. It’s no contest really. How could you top this? Down its wide marbled corridors you’ll find 21 treatment rooms and eight (count them, eight) different pools and spa pools. This is the UK’s largest resort spa and one of the main reasons why the English moneyed classes and a whole clutch of celebrities including Justin Timberlake, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig regularly check-in to Pennyhill Park.
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Yet there are better reasons to indulge in this sublime spa than the possibility of catching a glimpse of 007 in a towel. The Spa’s treatments are as impressive as its size. Try sampling the 90-minute Chocolate Therapy, complete with chocolate and hazelnut sugar body scrub, or the three-hour Terra Magica Calm and Sensual pleasure ritual (who could resist that?), which includes a massage and facial using Thalgo products. You have to stay a couple of nights here just to do justice to The Spa’s Thermal Heaven, ‘the UK’s most advanced thermal sequencing experience’– that’s saunas and steam rooms to you and I – but not just any old Swedish sauna, oh no. You can choose from herbal saunas, a laconium, a tepidarium, plunge pool, aromatic schnapps steam room and an ice cave, so cold that British politeness really comes to the fore, “after you;”
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“Oh, no please after YOU, I insist.” The rooms, should you ever drag yourself from the soft bathrobe-clad delights of the spa, are similarly extravagant. Butlers in tailcoats and pink cravats greet you at check-in, athough mercifully their manner is far less formal than their clothes. The staff are to a man (and woman) helpful, warm and friendly. The reception area has a large baronial fireplace and the common areas are full of oil paintings, statues and quirky antiques.
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Not all the rooms are as historic as pictures of the ivy-clad exterior of the main house might lead you to believe. Much of the accomomdation is in more modern annexes but all are created in keeping with the original. My vast room comes complete with terracotta floor tiles, wrought iron chandeliers, and a huge bathroom with a claw-footed bath. Other rooms have four poster beds and antique armoirs. Pennyhill Park is in what is known as the Surrey Greenbelt (people who live here have easy access to London but bigger gardens), otherwise dubbed the ‘gin and jag’ belt. Which is probably why I count three Jaguars, several BMWs and a Bentley in the hotel driveway. So if you want to make like the natives, have a gin and tonic in the bar then head to The Latymer, with its Michelin star, to order such hearty delights as suckling pig with lavender, or to the more mainstream brasserie for sizable steaks.
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For breakfast try the kippers or the kind of boiled egg Nanny would have dished up. To work off all that rich food there are tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course, which is free to hotel guests (you can hire clubs), and a number of walking and cycling tracks. For a quintissentially English experience why not have a game on the croquet lawn. Other activities screaming out for a tweed jacket and brogues are clay pigeon shooting, archery (very Robin Hood) or fishing nearby.
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Details:
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Pennyhill Park Hotel & The Spa
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