The best way to enjoy a Scandi-style seaside spa? Gorge on butter, dodge exercise and embrace the cold
I’m watching the Danish chef Thomas Rode Andersen pour more melted fat into a blender than he sports over his entire perfectly-honed, tattooed body. Denmark’s one-time Michelin-starred bad boy – think Marco Pierre White in the Eighties – is now a fanatical health guru, having discovered the advantages of extending his lifeline when he met his second wife, a sommelier 15 years his junior, a decade ago.
He certainly looks the part: glowing skin, bulging biceps, barely a wrinkle apart from when he ripples his six-pack… You get the picture. I’m relieved to see that the second ingredient in our “healthy” cookery lesson is kale, though I’m not sure how even this revered superfood will negate the impact of the lard.
When Andersen adds another half-pack of butter to his parsley and tarragon sauce, while lecturing on the evils of gluten, I’m starting to wonder if my heart will survive a single meal on his Paleolithic diet, let alone the decade he’s been on it.
Earlier he had defeated my friend Bella and me with his signature workout, which involved swinging 22lb kettlebells around while standing waist-deep in the Baltic. Ten minutes in we ran for the beach, collapsing on the sand and shamelessly citing bad backs, advanced years and anything else we thought might excuse us.
Realising he was up against negative forces far stronger than his own positive energy, Thomas pronounced us “the worst pupils he had ever taught” and gave up. A water meditation followed, where he had us floating like corpses, face-down, holding our breath for 60-second intervals.
I’m not sure what it did for our bodies, but it certainly silenced our whingeing. Still bloated from the summer’s rosé indulgence, the UK heatwave having turned pink wine into a national drink, I’d set off on a three-day trip with a girlfriend to the seaside spa resort of Kurhotel Skodsborg, near Copenhagen.
My first glimpse of the institutional white building on the banks of Oresund was not prepossessing. It was originally a sanatorium built in 1898, recently augmented with a new spa by Henning Larsen Architects, and superficially it retains a whiff of its roots. It is more like the glacial world of an Anita Brookner novel than the candlelit, sheepskin-strewn hygge the Danes are known for. The all-white spa, with its myriad pools, steam rooms, salt cave and sauna, is a miracle of modern indulgence, with treatments for all.
My favourite was SaunaGus, an intimidating session built around extremes of heat. In the sauna, health-exuding hostess Ida deployed blasts of essential oils – sage, peppermint, cedarwood, mandarin, lemon – on the hot coals to calm our minds and seep into our bodies.
When the heat and herbs began to overcome, we headed outdoors in our dressing gowns to the jetty, where we descended a ladder and immersed ourselves, yelping, in the icy Baltic. It’s a shock to the system, but the waves of euphoria and sense of well-being that follow can’t be over-exaggerated.
Soon we were speeding back and forth like crazy women, addicted to the rush created by such temperature extremes. Andersen’s butter-soaked lunch of bass and puréed kale was sublime, though I couldn’t help imagining it setting in my arteries in the sea.
The spa’s detox diet was equally delicious with its medley of Nordic flavours: three-style tomato salad, steamed cod with spring leeks, lobster tails with cucumber relish, and open sandwiches on Andersen’s Paleo Bread, a combination of nuts, seeds and egg that’s happily proved easy to reproduce at home, as I’m now hooked.
When the sun came out we cycled the length and breadth of Dyrehaven, the Unesco World Heritage Site beside the Kurhotel, enjoying rolling grasslands dotted with deer and sweeping views from the Hermitage Palace down to the sea.
We watched Danes at play – walking, cycling, jogging – the legendary Scandi embrace of the great outdoors visible all around us. Despite months in freezing temperatures with crepuscular light they positively glow, leading me to wonder if we should all up our butter intake and jump into whatever freezing waterway we can find.
The essentials
Kurhotel Skodsborg (0045 4558 5800; skodsborg.dk/en) offers double rooms from £167 per night (based on two sharing) with spa access included.
