Pack away the Peloton — Daylesford launches luxury health club
Health complex The Club by Bamford is the latest addition to Daylesford’s flagship organic farm and wellness business in the CotswoldsImagine you’re a lawyer based in the Cotswolds. Over lockdown, your chinos got a little tight, so you decided to turn your barn into a home gym. Out went the wife’s pottery wheel and in came the Peloton.
Initially, reading business books while you cycled 20k was bliss. But then exercising alone started to feel sad. Yes, Soho Farmhouse has a gym and spa, but it’s bursting with selfie-ing weekend warriors sweating out cocktails on the treadmill.
Like Disneyland, it has the feel of its own, luxurious kingdom: some find it magic, others a little contrived. But my sneak preview of The Club before it fully opens at the end of March tells me it’s going to be country club heaven for Daylesford disciples.
The aesthetic in the existing (non-member) Bamford Wellness spa is 50 shades of white and giant crystals — but The Club has been decorated in a more traditionally masculine manner, with shades of black and moss green and leather club chairs. Its stealth-wealth rustic chic is a mix of Moroccan plaster, granite, marble and wood, with natural accents such as a table made from weathered elm and lights strung from a silver birch branch. Forget water coolers making that soul-sapping gulping sound as you fill a plastic cup. Instead there are minimalist iron taps that dispense water from the farm borehole.
£2,250 Starting rate for annual membership
I have signed up for a personal training session that reflects the new “farm fitness” concept: classes that entail lifting bales of hay, pushing loaded wheelbarrows, flipping tyres and carrying logs for “those who are more used to city living” according to the brochure.
The real action at The Club will probably happen away from the gym floor in The Nest, a social area and restaurant with an outdoor terrace overlooking an orchard. The founders want people to hang out, as well as work out, and given the successful crowd that this country club is likely to attract, expect a hotbed of members-only networking. The Cotswolds answer to Camelot? Maybe. A lot of camel-coloured cashmere? Certainly.
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This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Carola Long
