The wrap is the most physically passive treatment we offer and the one that most reliably converts sceptics. You spend seventy-five minutes being covered in warm clay, wrapped in linen, left alone, and then rinsed under warm rain.

The clay goes on by hand, warm, in a full pass from ankles to shoulders, which takes about fifteen minutes and is itself quietly pleasant. Then you are wrapped and left for thirty. This is the part people arrive dreading and leave describing as the best half hour of their month: the linen is warm, the room is dark, nothing further is going to happen to you, and there is no way to be productive inside a linen wrap.

The rinse is under the rain heads, warm, unhurried, and long enough to get all of it — clay in the hairline is the one complaint we have engineered out over the years. Afterwards your therapist works a plain oil into the skin while it is still warm, which is when it actually absorbs, and this is why we ask you not to shower again that evening.

It suits dry skin, cold-handed people, and anybody at the end of a long stretch. It is not suitable if you are claustrophobic in any degree — the wrap is snug by design and loosening it defeats the treatment. Say so at booking and we will point you at the Long Quiet instead, which reaches a similar place by a different road.