O SPA review

I'm not really a spa sort of gal. I'm more DIY for things like facials, but I kept seeing offers on GroupOn and LivingSocial for dirt cheap spa packages, so I thought why not?

I booked onto the Relaxation Bliss pamper package at O SPA, through lastminute.com, which cost £39 for 90 minutes worth of treatments. You can then use the sauna, steam room, hydra pool and so on for another 90 minutes. That would have been all well and good, but my appointment ended at half 5 and the spa closed at 6... I didn't get to use those facilities at all.

I arrived late to my appointment, purely because I had a bit of a technology fail. Yes, it's usually brilliant when you type in a postcode to Maps and you use the GPS to get you to your destination, but Maps pointed me in the wrong direction. I'm sure this only ever happens in movies and TV shows set in London, but I did actually spot a policeman, equipped with a paper map, who sent me in the right direction.

The spa branch I went to - City Riverside - is located inside the Nuffield Fitness Centre and it's not at all obvious that it shares a building with this gym. Sold as "located in Grade 2 listed archways, the location is steeped in history", I soon found out that history means noisy when I entered the very small treatment room. Set in the archways, the archways have a train line on top of it... You try and relax completely when all you can hear the trains rattling overhead every five minutes. I was there on a Sunday - I dread to think what it's like when there is a peak timetable operating.

But, there's one thing I pride myself on and that's being able to escape into my own little world. I settled down on the massage table to enjoy my back, shoulder and neck massage, which was perfectly fine, though nothing to wax lyrical about. 

When it came to the facial I would have liked her to explain what she was putting on my face, but it smelt yummy, and she did my final treatment whilst the mask was working its magic. Now, the package had "hasta-abhyanga" as the final 30 minute treatment, but it was actually 10 minutes of that, 10 minutes of "shiroabhyanga" and 10 minutes of "pada-abhyanga". These are ancient ayurvedic Indian arm, head, and foot treatments respectively... Yes, foot treatments. Cue my panic as I'm not a fan of people touching my feet. Surprisingly though, that was the best one out of those treatments and I may just hate my feet a little less now. I didn't really rate the hand and arm massage, but the head massage was good.

After that, my mask was removed, and it was time to get dressed. I'd only had 75 minutes worth of treatment - fair enough, I was late - but there was no apology for me not getting to use the other facilities and no recommendation for me to keep drinking lots of water after my treatments. I was, at this point, happy to recommend the O SPA experience. For £39, even without using the facilities, it was great value.

This changed when I got on the Tube and my neck felt a bit itchy. Touching it, I felt some leftover mask still on my face from the facial. Fair enough, it was perhaps in a tricky place, an oversight, but on further inspection I noticed other parts of my face still had bits of mask on it. Apologies if you were on the Northern line with me, the girl who appeared to have a weird, flaky skin condition, but you can't catch anything from poor service I'm happy to reassure you.

Because of this, I wouldn't recommend them. Have you booked things though group offer sites? What do you think to them if you have? x