Wilderness Sauna Glencoe — Private Hilltop Sauna with Views over Loch Linnhe

Wilderness Sauna Glencoe was one of the stops on a long weekend away in the Highlands with my fiance. Overlooking Loch Linnhe, the sauna is part of the wider Woodlands Glencoe estate, but it can be booked separately from a stay there.

The sauna, plunge bath and outdoor deck are all reserved for a single booking. It was the first private sauna session either of us had booked, and for an hour, it felt like our own wee escape.

Before the sauna

We arrived early and headed to reception first, only to discover we didn’t actually need to check in after all.

With time to spare, we ordered breakfast from the estate’s food truck, a converted vintage Citroën, and sat down with our coffees on the decking outside, overlooking the mountains and the loch. We got chatting to the owner, who’d moved there from Glasgow. He said getting to look at those views every day was one of the best things about his job.

The decking area felt like the hub of the whole estate, people stopping for coffee, heading off on activities, making the most of the sunshine. Small wooden eco pods with round windows were tucked into the trees nearby, blended into the forest enough that we didn’t notice them at first. A group nearby was getting shown how to use Segways before heading off on a tour. We read afterwards that the whole place started out as an arable farm, bought in 2009 by a family who still run it today.

A private sauna session

The sauna has a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the loch, and you get the same view from the plunge bath and the deck outside.

It seats up to four, but it was just the two of us. We ended up doing four or five rounds altogether, moving between the sauna, the plunge bath and the deck. I used the plunge bath after every round, while my fiance switched between that and the waterfall bucket beside it.

My fiance noticed the colours on the mountain tops shifting as clouds moved across the sun, and pointed it out. We spent a while after that just watching the colours change.

Afterwards, I read a little more about Loch Linnhe

It was only after we got back that I started reading into Loch Linnhe properly. I’d never really thought about the difference between a freshwater loch and a sea loch before, but it turns out Loch Linnhe is actually a sea loch, connected to the Firth of Lorn. The name comes from the Gaelic word linne, meaning pool.

Final thoughts

We’d only booked the sauna, but by the time we left, we were already talking about coming back and staying at the estate itself next time.