Hello everyone!
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I had the pleasure of attending the infamous Vale Resort Spa* last week to try out one of their new facials launching this month.
If you don’t know much about the Vale Resort …..where on earth have you been?!
The resort contains a four star hotel with conference facilities, restaurants, champagne bars, award winning golf course, leisure, spa and sports facilities. I can reassure you that if it is good enough for the Welsh rugby team, Cardiff Blues, Welsh football team and Cardiff City FC on a regular basis plus Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool it is certainly good enough for me!
The spa contains the largest spa in Wales and offers more than 50 different traditional and holistic treatments – it is absolutely huge! There are 19 treatment rooms and 6 bespoke relaxation zones with various names and purposes, I’ll talk more about these later on. The facilities also include a 20m pool, whirlpool bath, sauna and steam room plus state of the art gym, fitness studios and squash and tennis courts.
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| Image from The Vale Resort |
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| Image from The Vale Resort |
The spa itself also has a lovely cafe area called the Chai cafe where you can order drinks including teas, coffees and champagne as well as the real treat – afternoon tea! I can just imagine how relaxing it is to spend a day here, the atmosphere is so chilled you can easily lose track of time and treating yourself with an afternoon tea as well would easily rate as one of the best days in my opinion.
Upon arrival at the spa I was booked in and given a bag full of my robe, slippers and towel for the afternoon. After changing into these I began to find my way around.
The changing rooms were lovely and clean and had a really simple design with purple doors on the lockers. I really liked the look of this, and particularly liked the locking system. For these doors you don’t need a key or a pound coin, you just type your own four digit code in and lock it, needing the same code to open it again. This is SO useful at spas when you’re taking your robe on and off for treatments etc, and also you don’t ruin any swimwear with safety pins….such a good idea and I wish more places had this.
In fact it would be a great idea for the lockers in the gym downstairs too…sneaky suggestion for future upgrades?!
One of the ladies behind reception gave me a quick tour after this and I was very grateful as there are so many rooms at first it can seem like a maze! However once I’d been taken around it was quite easy to find your way.
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| Image from The Vale Resort |
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| Image from The Vale Resort |
The various different relaxation rooms are a treat, my favourite was the float zone. Hands down this was amazing and after finding this and spending 10 minutes on a heated water bed I had completely forgotten about any niggles that were on my mind. If you don’t try out any other rooms, make sure you try out this one, although it is popular with groups so can fill up quickly.
There is also a chill-out zone with leather sofas and magazines (I saw lots of men here, great to see men enjoying spa days too!), and a slumber zone with low lighting and quilts. I didn’t get around them all but there is certainly something for everyone, you can even eat and drink in one of them!
Before my treatment I managed to try out the sauna, steam room and whirlpool for a quick dip before getting to the main event, my treatment.
During my visit I was treated to a Temple Spa My Kinda skin prescriptive facial from the new partnership with Temple Spa, this takes 55 mins and costs £60.
Temple Spa is a luxury British brand and offers a Mediterranean inspired collection of massage and facial treatments with the highest quality ingredients. Currently the Vale Resort Spa is the only place in South Wales to offer this brand, so I was very excited to try them out and see what they had to offer.
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| Image from The Vale Resort |
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| Image from The Vale Resort |
This facial is prescriptive depending on what your skin needs, I know my skin is combination but can be really dehydrated so I asked for as much hydration as possible to sort it out. My therapist was called Cayce and she was lovely, asked me all about my skin and what I was looking for before leaving me to get settled.
Once I was comfortable on the table the treatment began, and there were all sorts of wonderful smells of essential oils. She even put some lotion onto my feet and wrapped them up in a towel before the facial began so I knew I was in for a treat.
At this point I’d love to go into detail about the various stages of the treatment but firstly I think that would ruin the experience and secondly I can’t remember them all. It was the most comprehensive facial I’ve ever had and I relaxed so much that I wouldn’t remember everything that happened!
My skin was cleansed, toned, scrubbed, moisturised and copious amount of hydrating products layered onto it and by the end it felt amazing. The facial also includes lymph drainage and a face, scalp and hand massage of your choosing which is always a lovely bonus when the masks are on your face and the sign of a luxury treatment. I wasn’t actually given a choice but was given the scalp massage which is what I would have chosen, I always feel so relaxed after them don’t you??
After the treatment Cayce brought me a glass of water and showed me back to a relaxation area of my choice to continue my spa experience and I was also given a card with my ‘spa prescription’ of recommended products. I was advised to leave the products on my face for as long as possible to let the high quality ingredients work their magic so I did exactly that and the day after my skin still had that glowy feel.
I fully enjoyed my afternoon at the Vale Resort Spa and left feeling like I was ready to take on whatever was thrown at me during my first day back to work after Christmas which is saying quite a lot! I also left with a few travel sized products so I am hoping to test them out over the next few weeks and see how they fare on a normal day applied by myself.
I can honestly say I will be back for more and looking at the list of treatments it would be very hard to choose. There are a variety of different Temple Spa facials lasting between 55 mins and 85 mins, and various Temple Spa body treatments lasting between 40 and 70 mins so there is something for everyone. I think I will have to go back and try a massage soon!
Have you been to the Vale Resort Spa before? Will you be going to try out their new Temple Spa treatments?
What’s your favourite kind of treatment in general? Let me know!
L xxx
*The My Kinda Skin facial and half spa day was kindly given to me to try out and review the new treatment, all of my opinions however are completely honest