Back in June I bought a package deal from Travelzoo for a 1 night stay, breakfast, lunch and dinner plus £100 towards spa treatments for only £149 - an incredible deal! So in July I booked our stay for September as it was a popular deal and quite booked up. At first I thought I'd never heard of Lifehouse Spa, but then I remembered I had read a very favourable review in the Sunday Mirror, so I was really looking forward to it.
Unfortunately it wasn't exactly the relaxing experience we had hoped for. To start with, our journey to the spa was disrupted by someone jumping in front of a train so we were delayed by an hour. That obviously wasn't the spa's fault, but when we finally arrived we found out that they hadn't booked us in for the shiatsu massages that I'd requested. I obviously wasn't very happy as I'd booked these massages over 2 months ago and someone from the spa had even phoned me to confirm exactly which massage I'd wanted! This is the second spa that Steve and I have been to and on both occasions they said that they can't tell you what times your treatments are in advance of you arriving. I think this is the most ridiculous policy and it should be changed because then our massages might have actually been booked in! So bad luck for us because there was only one person who actually did shiatsu massages and he was fully booked up and then not available the following day. First of all we were offered reflexology as an alternative treatment (no thank you!), but we specifically wanted massages, so she eventually said we could have the Iconic Massage which is basically a full body massage. The cost of these went over the £100 that was part of my package so I asked for the extra cost to be removed, which they agreed to but I think they really they should have offered to waive this cost! They only had massages available the following day so we had to wait even longer to release all that tension!
So we had a little walk around the grounds as they have "extensive" gardens, which were nice to wander around as it was a sunny day. We saw a few people wandering around the gardens or on bikes which you can rent from the spa. Our taxi driver who picked us up from the train station (a free service the spa offers) explained that the gardens were put in place by Lord and Lady Byng and they collected a lot of different plants. Here's just some of the unusual things we saw (well they were unusual to me as I'm not really into flowers! I took quite a lot of photos as I was testing out the aperture priority mode on my point-and-shoot camera!):
And here's me relaxing in one of the deckchairs:
Apart from the massages, what I was mostly looking forward to was the food as I'd read lots of reviews on Tripadvisor who had raved about how fantastic it was.
They had given us a dinner reservation for 7pm so we got to the restaurant on the dot.
As a precursor to the meal, we were presented with an amuse-bouche of a honey dew and watermelon palette cleanser which was unusual but actually very nice and refreshing.
For my starter I had the scallops (we think this was actually just one scallop sliced in half) which came with cauliflower puree (delicious! tasted like cauliflower cheese), capers and raisins (I didn't like the sweetness of the raisins and I couldn't taste the saltiness of the capers). Overall I enjoyed my starter.
Steve on the other hand had a disappointing risotto which was supposed to have smoked haddock and leeks, but it was beyond bland and it was so white on the plate that we added the fork in the photo for some interest. The foam on the top did not add anything apart from an unappetising resemblance to spit. When we stayed at the Alexander House Hotel Spa we had risotto as a starter and that was awful as well, so we have made a vow never to order risotto again (this rule does not apply if in Italy or when we go to Croatia in two weeks as my friend says it's wonderful there).
For main we both ordered the duck breast ('like-a-hot-knife-through-butter' tender, but such a crying shame that the skin wasn't crispy!) which came with fondant potato (I loved it but Steve passed his to me as he's no potato lover) and braised Savoy cabbage (very nice but quite salty from the added bacon - we had bacon with our full English breakfast and I couldn't eat it because it was so salty!). The carrots and green beans were a side order that we shared but they were very plain and not really necessary.
For dessert I had the pineapple tatin with rum and raisin ice cream and toffee sauce which rounded off my dinner nicely. I think this was a deconstructed version as it seemed like the pastry had been cooked separately from the caramelised pineapple, but it was still very nice. I have only made an Apple Tarte Tatin before when I did my Michelin Star Cookery course but I will definitely give this pineapple version a try.
Steve opted for the chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce, which was disappointing as the cake was a bit dry and there is a serious lack of chocolate sauce on the plate!
Overall we did enjoy dinner, although Steve got a little irritated that our waiter didn't tell us what the specials were after I overheard him telling another table (but they didn't actually sound that special anyway) and we saw some other tables receiving bread but it wasn't on the menu so it must have been insider knowledge to ask for it, no doubt at an extra cost. After receiving our starters and seeing the size of other people's starters we thought we might need some bread to fill us up, but actually our duck was a decent sized portion and I was definitely comfortably full after my dessert.
We had a nice drink in the bar area and then headed to bed as it had been a bit of a stressful day! I won't say too much about the room as there are photos on the Lifehouse website and they are a pretty good representation. However, the room was very hot as there is no air conditioning and even with the window/door open it was still very stuffy.
Anyway, back to talking about food! Breakfast consisted of a buffet where you could choose cereals, fruit, yoghurt and pastries and then you could also choose from a hot menu. So we had croissants and juice and then the full English which was one sausage, bacon, black pudding, portabello mushroom, cherry tomatoes and your choice of egg (I had a fried one and Steve had poached, but were a little overcooked). We were quite restrained at breakfast as we knew we had lunch still to come and our massages.
So after using the spa facilities of hydrotherapy pool, salt inhalation room and sauna, we had lunch.
Lunch was 2 courses and we chose to have a dessert instead of a starter with our main course. We both had the Pave of Dedham Vale beef (perfectly cooked medium-rare but I prefer a bit more fat for flavour), truffle foam (another disgusting foam! not my cup of tea), roasted cherry tomatoes, frisee salad with bacon (there was no bacon but as it's so salty maybe that's a good thing), and a few Maldon sea salt seasoned chips (these weren't fantastic, Steve's Mum does better chips!). This was the most expensive item on the menu so it was the obvious choice, but it was definitely the most appealing thing on the menu.
Desserts were disappointing on both counts. Steve picked the thyme poached peaches (undercooked and cold) on orange cake (dry and dense) with strawberry mousse and I had the panna cotta which was layered (the top part was the best bit but I don't think that was the panna cotta!).
The menus we had were different to the ones that are on the website at the moment, but if you have a look then you'll get a good idea of the type of food Lifehouse is trying to offer. To be honest I think they are trying too hard with some of the more leftfield creations and they should concentrate on getting the basics right.
Another foodie mentionable is The Strawberry Tree Juice Bar where you can get tea, coffee and fruit smoothies (we didn't like the sound of the Vegetable Explosion!). We had a hot chocolate from there using our free drink voucher which was an unexpected extra of our package.
Well I think I've covered every aspect of the food so I should say something about the massages we finally had. Mine was done by the lovely April who could not apologise enough for the booking mistake. She gave me a wonderful massage and did as I asked by concentrating on the horrible knot in my shoulder and in my neck. Steve was less impressed with his massage by a different therapist, but part of it is luck of the draw with who you get and also how comfortable you feel with asking for what you want.
So would we stay at Lifehouse Spa again? I would have to say no I don't think so. The difficulties we had with our booking has really put me off visiting any spa ever again. It seems it's the norm to not get your treatment and meal schedule until you arrive and we really hate not knowing what's going on.
Lifehouse need to sort out their reception/booking system as getting through on the phone is a nightmare as they take ages to answer and they don't reply to emails very quickly, if at all (I resorted to posting a message on their Facebook page to get an answer to my question!). I heard mistakes with bookings have been quite common, so I would recommend if you are visiting to double-check that your treatments have been booked in!
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