New Seaside Sauna Opens Its Doors In St Andrews

A new relaxation and wellness establishment has officially opened its doors. The custom-built St Andrews Seaside Sauna is situated across from East Sands beach and features a large glass window offering visitors views of the sea. The new sauna is one of several locations on the East Coast of Scotland operated by Scottish Seaside Saunas.

Founder Judith Dunlop was inspired to establish Scottish Seaside Saunas due to her passion for the East Neuk’s tradition of sea swimming, which has been practised in Judith’s family for generations. Having spent her childhood swimming on the shores of St Andrews, the new location is especially nostalgic for Judith. The East Sands location was attractive to Judith for its accessibility and proximity to the Leisure Centre and Fife Coastal Path. The sauna’s adjacency with the sea is a key component of the sauna experience for Judith, who maintains that alternating between cold-water swimming and sauna lounging provides maximum health benefits.

Judith anticipates instructing various classes in the sauna, including yoga, traditional Lithuanian leaf-whisking, and ‘Aufguss’, a multi-sensory sauna ritual involving scent, music, storytelling, and manipulation of airflow. Judith told The Saint: “There are lots of different groups that can benefit from saunas in different ways […] everyone should be able to access the physical and mental health benefits of saunas.” After three years of working with Fife Council for permission to open the sauna, Judith is excited to share the tradition and bring fellow sauna-experts from her international network to St Andrews.

Actors Julie Wilson Nimmo and Greg Hemphill partnered with Judith to open the new sauna. The married couple’s passion for cold-water swimming was documented throughout summer 2023 in their BBC television series Jules and Greg’s Wild Swim. The series covered Jules and Greg’s visit to the Elie Seaside Sauna, and Judith even travelled with Jules and Greg to Oslo, Norway to introduce them to traditional Scandinavian sauna culture.

In the sauna community, outdoor saunas are widely regarded as a holistic experience, featuring components of environmental appreciation, immersion in nature, and opportunity for socialisation, all centred around the focal point of health and wellbeing. The Seaside Sauna aims to create this experience by implementing environmentally-conscious technology, including a Narvi black stove, the lowest-emission stove on the market. For Judith, a crucial element of saunas is the “community-building” aspect. With the St Andrews Sauna able to seat sixteen visitors at a time, Judith hopes that visitors will enjoy socialising with friends and meeting new people. “Saunas build social networks,” she explained, “It’s an alternative to going to the pub.”

Outdoor saunas, commonly referred to as ‘wild saunas’, are on the rise in Scotland. Distinguished from indoor saunas typically found at spas, ‘wild’ saunas specifically intend to create an experience focused on their natural surroundings and connection to the outdoors. Many wild saunas are situated near beaches and lochs, designed to offer cold plungers the opportunity to quickly warm themselves before or after their swims. These saunas complement the active, outdoor lifestyle popular in Scottish recreational culture. Since the first of its kind opened in Scotland in 2021, over fifty wild saunas have opened across the country.

Explaining the growing popularity of wild saunas, Judith Dunlop observed that “coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were all receptive to different means of taking care of ourselves.” She also acknowledged that social media has played a significant role in spurring the momentum of the ‘sauna movement’, as it has helped introduce people to the benefits of saunas. Judith explained that in her experience, saunas can present a “latent need”. She stated, “I see [saunas] as a means of changing society […] a way of empowering yourself.”

The Scottish sauna surge has been accompanied by a growing demand for wellness centres among tourists, according to a report by VisitScotland. Their research has revealed that tourists frequently choose Scotland as a destination to “get away from it all”, seeking to unwind in natural settings. With Scotland becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination, the wild sauna movement is expected to contribute to rising tourism.

Image by Liora Berg