The Steamie Sauna, Lossiemouth — A Birthday Sauna and a Lighthouse Tour

My fiance asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, and I said a sauna day out. We were staying in Findhorn for the week, and Lossiemouth was just along the coast, so we chose The Steamie Sauna. We’d also read about Covesea Lighthouse, which isn’t far from the sauna and runs tours, so we decided to visit the lighthouse first.

From the top, we could see the whole stretch of coast, the beach, the cliffs and, below us, The Steamie, where we’d be heading later that morning.

The lighthouse

The tour was led by a local volunteer from the Covesea Lighthouse Community Company. We climbed 144 steps and a couple of ladders to reach the top, and it was worth it for the view.

The lighthouse was designed by Alan Stevenson, one of the Lighthouse Stevensons, a family who built dozens of lighthouses around Scotland’s coast over several generations. He was also the uncle of Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island.

Built in 1846, the lighthouse has some unexpected interior design touches. The light switches have decorative backplates with Egyptian motifs, and even some of the door hinges are shaped like lighthouses. I liked those small details.

We stepped out onto the gallery around the lantern room. One section is enclosed by thick red glass panels, and while we were outside we spotted a gull’s nest on the other side, with a mother and her chicks sitting inside.

Most people picture a seagull swooping down to steal your chips, so seeing one sitting quietly with her chicks, completely unfazed by us, was lovely.

It was very windy up there, and I gripped my phone tightly while taking a few photos before we made our way back down.

A warm welcome

Once we were back down, we headed over to The Steamie, where Angie, the owner, welcomed us.

The sauna sits at the bottom of the hill, with the lighthouse above it and the caravan park nearby. Around the barrel sauna, she’d created a lovely outdoor space, a seating area, a picnic bench and half whisky barrels arranged around it. Each barrel had a wooden lid and a post in the middle, with solar lights strung between them.

There was also an outdoor rug, a changing tent and a shower.

A basket of oranges sat at the water station for sauna guests, along with a homemade salt scrub. My fiance, who wouldn’t even use moisturiser or lip balm, was surprisingly enthusiastic about the scented scrub. It made me laugh.

West Beach

It was about a five-minute walk from the sauna to West Beach, along a sandy path with grassy dunes and cliffs on one side and the caravan park on the other.

West Beach has a wilder feel than the other side of Lossiemouth, with its cliffs and caves. The tide was out when we visited, leaving wide, flat sands and a long walk to the water, so we only did one sea dip and used the shower for the rest of the session. It was quiet too, hardly anyone around.

A failed prank

On the way down for our first dip, my fiance wandered off the path and told me to keep going. I assumed he’d gone to answer the call of nature, so I carried on without thinking much of it.

He’d actually gone to crawl through one of the small sea caves in the cliffs, planning to pop out the other side and give me a fright. It clearly took him longer than he’d expected, because by the time he came out, I’d already walked past and was nearly at the beach.

It’s a good job nobody happened to be walking behind me. They’d have got quite a surprise if they’d seen him crawling out of a cave as they walked past.

A small world

It turned out we were the only two people booked onto the session, so we had the sauna to ourselves. With nobody else around, we spent a good bit of time chatting to Angie.

We both have quite strong non-local accents, which naturally led to the usual question of where we were from. She told us she’d previously served in the RAF, and that her husband still does. Neither of them is originally from Lossiemouth, but they’d chosen to stay in the area. We’d met quite a few people connected to the RAF during our travels around Moray that week, which wasn’t surprising given the base’s presence nearby.

She’d got into saunas through wild swimming, which is how she ended up running The Steamie.

We also discovered she has family in the town next to where I live. It’s a small town, and we hadn’t expected someone we met in Moray to have heard of it, never mind have family living in the next town along. It was a lovely coincidence.

Final thoughts

The Moray Coast delighted me all week, the beaches, the cliffs, the clear water, the quiet. Even the pebbles on the beaches caught my eye, soft greys, browns and dusty pinks. Wet, the colours came through even more. We took a few home to make a stacked stone cairn, a wee reminder of the trip.

And The Steamie ended up being exactly what I’d hoped for when I said I wanted a sauna day for my birthday, simple, welcoming, and by the coast I’d been admiring all week.