Get a wow a day

Don't you just love gifts that can keep on giving? Well, as exciting as Christmas day can be, I am often most excited about the gifts that give you something to look forward to; quad biking, cocktail making, and theatre tickets all being ones I've received before. But this time, it was the gift of giving, that kept on giving because for Christmas this year, as well as presents, I bought Laura a voucher for a spa day wtih prosecco afternoon tea. Or, should I say a wowcher. I'm pretty sure that I should start being paid as a wowcher ambassador or something because honestly, I could not recommend them to more people. Having used them for bottomless lunches, holidays and countless spa days, I've never been disappointed and the price is just crazy. The voucher that I bought for Laura was only £25 for the both of us and included all day access to the pool, jacuzzi, sauna, steam room, gym and exercise classes at the Eastwood Hall Hotel, as well as afternoon tea and a glass of prosecco each. Considering afternoon tea is normally £12 each on its own and a day pass should be £15.50 at Eastwood Hall, the whole day worked out better than half price.

So after driving for almost 2 years, I finally had my first need to go on the motorway as I drove us up to the hotel. The place itself was beautiful and so big! Even just the grounds seemed to go on forever. After reading that the leisure access included all their fitness classes, we were planning to maybe do something like Zumba. But when we got there, the only remaining thing on the schedule for Saturday morning was an hour long class named 'Insanity', so we suddenly weren't quite so keen. We decided to skip the class and just went in the gym for an hour instead. It was a really nice gym with plenty of different machines and we managed to get a good chunk of cardio in (necessary, knowing how much cake we'd be eating later)!

Then we moved into the pool area which was really nice and thankfully super quiet! We got talking to a couple there who go regularly and they said that kid's splash time was at 3pm on Saturdays and then lessons were Sunday mornings, so thank god we managed to dodge that bullet! We had a lovely hour or so in there, standing in the swimming pool (rather than swimming in it), nipping in the sauna for about 5 minutes just to try it (because neither of us are massively keen on them) and spending most of our time in the jacuzzi, standing up waving every 5 minutes to set off the bubbles via the camera. Short of booking treatments at an extra cost, could you think of a better way to spend a Saturday?

For once in my life, I was the more dressed down between myself and the person I was with. Laura had brought really nice clothes (including heeled boots) to put on, meanwhile I was kicking about in trainers, gym gear and still-semi-wet hair. I'm not angry at myself, just disappointed. Anyway, despite my less-than-ladies-who-lunch appearance, we moved into what can only be described as a drawing room for afternoon tea. It was a lovely setting, overlooking the grounds, and we were served prosecco, tea (english breakfast, always) and a big tier stand of sandwiches and cake. I've been for many an afternoon tea and in comparison to some of the others I've had, it was very average. But the food was lovely nonetheless and I was glad that it wasn't too ridiculous (the Patisserie Valerie one comes with like 7 slabs of full-sized cake). Plus, for the overall value, you can hardly knock it can you?