Pre and post his attendance at the Global Gift Foundation Gala, a unique international starry fundraiser featuring Victoria Beckham and Eva Longoria, our Company Director, Paul volunteered to visit the venue’s spa…
The gym and spa generously crowns the top floor of the revamped, fine tuned five star, Four Seasons Hotel, Park Lane. The property was the luxury inclined, Canadian management firm’s first venue in Europe in 1970. The commanding views East across the London skyline have altered remarkably in the intervening four and a half decades.
The gym is bijou but well equipped with the usual exercise equipment and free weights one might expect from a quality operation. There is a concept rowing machine, state-of-the-art techno gym running machines, and bikes and cross trainers. One can exert while watching the news unfurl or listen to music with complimentary headphones. But, for me, the best way is to look ahead out of the window, past the brittle-looking, leafless winter trees, admiring our great city while ticking off tourist attractions. You can make out the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Cathedral, the London Eye, and the increasing thicket of glassy skyscrapers piercing the sky, obelisk like.
Not that anyone needs to use the running machine because the hotel is ideally situated within easy reach of three of London’s wonderful parks. Hyde Park, Green Park and St James Park are the capital’s lungs. I managed an 8km Hyde Park loop taking in Speakers Corner, Kensington Palace and the Diana Fountain. And, if you get up early enough, you may well be lucky enough to spot the Household Cavalry exercising their horses.
The hotel helpfully provides running maps for visitors from afar, and importantly their commissionaire warmly welcomes one home to the hotel without an ounce of snobbery as one stumbles back, puffing and slick with exertion.
The perfect way to unwind post workout exists within the spa. A sensational marble-clad steam room, which must be the hottest in temperature I have basked in, a quirky sauna with interesting views across to neighbouring apartments (this really is the antithesis of the usual, basement afterthought spas tend to feel like), and then a bubbling hot pool with jets to urge away aches and pains.
The spa offers a host of reasonably priced treatments. I firmly recommend the even firmer, 50 minute Fitness Massage (£110), intended to release deep-seated muscular tension.
Finally, be sure to spend some downtime in the 10th floor lounge and veranda. Coffees, pastries and fruit are complimentary and it is probably the best kept secret office space, away from the hectic city below to churn out e-mails, or catch up on reading.
