Driftwood Sauna, Stonehaven — the Beach to Ourselves

We were staying in Aberdeen for a week while my fiance did a work course nearby, and I booked us a private sauna session at Driftwood in Stonehaven for one of the evenings we were up there.

Forgotten shorts

His course overran, so I packed a bag for us and drove to pick him up before heading to the sauna. On the way, he asked if I’d packed his swimming shorts.

“Yes, of course,” I said.

It wasn’t until he went to get changed at the sauna that we realised they weren’t in the bag. I definitely remembered putting them out on the bed, I must just never have actually packed them. I’m usually the one who makes the packing lists for every trip and reminds him what not to forget, so I had to laugh at the irony.

Fortunately, he saw the funny side. The owner just laughed when I explained and said his boxers would be fine. It was a private session anyway, so at least there wouldn’t be anyone else there.

By the time we arrived, the harbour was misty too, though it hadn’t been like that back at the hotel. The owner mentioned it was sea haar, a term I’d never heard before, so I looked it up afterwards. Harr is a Scottish word for sea fog, particularly the mist that rolls in from the water. He said it had been like that all day. Beyond a couple of dog walkers passing on the harbour front, there was nobody else around.

A castaway feel

The sauna is a converted horsebox, clad outside in driftwood, with a changing area and seating space nearby. The whole setup has a bit of a castaway feel, with salvaged bits and pieces used throughout, old fishing nets, buoys and even a pirate flag flying outside for fun.

There’s a sign at the seating area letting you know the local chip shops will deliver there. That made me laugh, and I wondered if anyone had actually done it. You don’t expect to be able to order food to a sauna on a harbour.

Inside, the sauna had character too, driftwood signs, little decorative touches on the walls, and a bowl of water with essential oils hanging over the stove.

The whisky barrel

Once we’d warmed up, it was time for our first dip. We had a choice between the whisky barrel right next to the sauna or the sea, and went for the barrel first, the first time either of us had plunged into one. The barrel was deep enough that only your head stayed above the surface. Concrete steps led down inside, giving you somewhere to sit facing out to the water. When I climbed in, there was a plastic lobster sitting at the bottom. I appreciated the humour.

Between rounds, we went into the sea too. It was only a short walk down from the sauna. The beach was really clean and the water clear and completely still. My fiance went in wearing just his boxers, not that he had any other option.

One of the oldest

We got chatting to the owner after the session, and he mentioned that Driftwood is one of the oldest wood-fired saunas in Scotland.

I knew the scene was fairly new, but hearing him call his sauna one of the oldest made me want to find out more about how it had all started.

Haar Sauna says its converted horsebox was completed in 2021 and was Scotland’s first mobile sauna, initially operating at Aberdeen Beach before eventually moving to Shetland. Elie Seaside Sauna followed in 2022, and since then outdoor saunas have started appearing all over Scotland.

The owner wondered aloud whether it might eventually go the same way as the indoor sauna boom of the 1970s, popular for a while, then largely forgotten. I really hoped not.

Another Stevenson

I read up on Stonehaven harbour afterwards. It had been wrecked by storms more than once over the centuries, and an engineer called Robert Stevenson redesigned it in the 1820s, a project that involved quarrying away a large rock that had been blocking the entrance and building a new pier. The improved harbour went on to become a major centre for the herring trade.

It was a name I came across again later, at The Steamie sauna in Lossiemouth. Robert’s son, Alan Stevenson, was the engineer who designed the lighthouse there.

Lighthouses were only one part of the Stevenson family’s work. They also worked on harbours, bridges, roads and canals across Scotland, so finding the same family name in both Stonehaven and Lossiemouth wasn’t quite the coincidence it first seemed.

Not always this quiet

We liked the harbour so much that we went back another night, this time on a lovely sunny evening. We had dinner at a seafood restaurant we’d spotted on our first visit. Afterwards we walked further along the coast and came across Stonehaven’s heated outdoor pool, an art deco lido from 1934 that’s said to be one of a kind in the UK. In the summer months, it runs moonlight swim sessions with live music.

The harbour was a completely different scene that time, locals and fishermen sitting out with a beer, teenagers jumping off the pier, a few jet skis buzzing about. It’s clearly a real social hub when the weather’s good.

We loved seeing it so lively too, but our first night is still my favourite, quiet, misty, and just the two of us with the beach and sea entirely to ourselves.