Can two very different friends enjoy the same holiday?
Detox devotee Trisha Andres and fitness fanatic Sally Peck are friends with very different takes on how to unwind. Here they team up for a stress-busting break on the Costa del Sol to see if they can both enjoy the same holiday...
Trisha – ‘I enjoyed the cacophony of chimes’
“Don’t lean forward, and keep your upper body upright as you lunge,” Ana, our personal trainer, instructed.
With my hands on my hips, I lunged on the wooden pier like a pro athlete in training. Ahead of me, the Strait of Gibraltar took on a grey sea foam colour and a mild wind swept over the water.
“You’re stiff. So stiff that your knee can’t even touch the floor,” Ana said. “Look at Sally,” she pointed at my colleague, who had gone on this break with me as an experiment to see if two different friends can enjoy the same holiday together. “She’s got perfect form.”
The deal was that we would both dip into each other’s worlds. Sally likes exercise and active pursuits; I like seeking inner calm. Sally is a no-nonsense realist from New York; I’m more an idealist with a weak spot for wellness. My first challenge: shorewalking and functional training on the pier. It was evident, especially to Ana, that this was alien territory for me.
Personal training on the beach wasn’t the only activity on offer during our combined fitness and wellness getaway on the Costa del Sol. We could hike the Benahavís, float in a saltwater thalasso pool, go riding through a pine forest or head to the spa for a mineral-rich mud wrap.
Nestled on the Golden Mile, the Marbella Club – which has hosted the Onassis clan and the Rothschilds – was the backdrop for our holiday.
“I want to come back 20lb lighter, Zen and with clear, glowing skin,” Sally confided before we set off on our four-day break. Ever the optimist, I just nodded.
To get my friend in the right frame of mind, I arranged for us to do a Tibetan bowl therapy session. An ancient sound healing practice, the treatment involves a therapist rubbing a mallet around the rim of a metal singing bowl. The movement produces other-worldly sounds believed to put one in a relaxed state.
As we lay on the floor, our therapist Alex tucked us into cashmere blankets. She then placed masks over our eyes before playing a husk shaker, which generated sounds that reminded me of the lapping of the waves.
“How was that for you?” Alex asked afterwards.
Granted, I was nowhere near nirvana but still, I enjoyed the cascading cacophony of chimes, singing bowls and shakers.
“Erm, it was fine,” Sally said, sceptically.
Our next, and arguably more successful, attempt at relaxation was at the spa where we were scheduled for a stress-reducing ritual, a treatment that comprised a scrub, a massage and a facial.
“This is the most relaxed I’ve been since the Eighties,” Sally said as we lay on the sun loungers overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.
Stepping back into Sally’s domain, we eschewed further spa treatments for cycling the Paseo Maritimo into Marbella town. With our Dutch bikes, we meandered along the palm tree-lined promenade. Here, Sally was in her element, taking charge with me gingerly glancing at the map every so often to check we were heading in the right direction. We cycled straight into Avenida Duque de Ahumada, a pedestrian area with yellow marble floors and fountains.
We turned left on Avenida Miguel Cano into Plaza de la Iglesia, or church square, where we locked up our bicycles. A staircase led us straight up to Plaza de los Naranjos, or the orange square in the old town of Marbella where we wandered the whitewashed streets and shopped for hats and espadrilles on Calle Nueva.
Back at Marbella Club, we were booked in for a spot of aerial yoga in a secluded corner surrounded by carob and holm oak trees. Annia, the instructor, helped me manoeuvre into an upside-down position. I felt like a baby elephant in a hammock. While I struggled to get myself back up, Sally glided like an acrobatic performer. Oh how the tables turned.
“I’m going to die,” I panicked.
“This is fun! It’s like we’re trying out for Cirque du Soleil,” Sally said. And it dawned on me: the perks of travelling with a friend are greater than the pitfalls, however different you are. And the wonderful thing is: you don’t even have to agree on everything.
Sally – ‘It’s like trying out for Cirque du Soleil’
When you hang upside down like a bat, peculiar things happen to your spinal column. This awkward position may, you muse, be undoing a decade’s worth of damage wrought by a desk-bound life. Aerial yoga may, equally, be bringing you close to cracking your skull.
And yet, danger or not, it’s liberating. “It’s like we’re trying out for Cirque du Soleil!” I called to my friend, Trisha, from my wobbly perch.
“Humph,” she grunted back. “But we’re not going to make it.”
And this was a curious turn of events. Had four days of being well – eating rabbit food, learning to relax while wearing nothing but disposable pants, and exercising in water, over water, by water – turned me into an optimist? Or had 72 hours with me burst my perma-cheerful friend’s bubble?
After a rough winter, I was suffering from insomnia and feeling out of shape. Because I am old-fashioned, I suggested a fitness break. But Trish, a few years younger than I, and entirely more modern, heard “wellness”.
The devotion of our generation to wellness approaches mania. From Gwyneth Paltrow’s penchant for steaming things to Meghan Markle’s supposed commandeering of Prince Harry’s diet, detox and yoga are now essentials. The wellness tourism market is worth about ￡430 billion.
Happily, Trisha and I decided to reboot at the Marbella Club on the Costa del Sol, the grand dame which has played host to everyone from Bardot to Olivier since it was opened by a prince in the Fifties. Frankly, this would be the ideal spot for a romantic break – but Trisha and I went for a “stress-reduction package” with fitness added (though six activities, including Pilates to core training, are available daily, free to guests).
Any programme at the Marbella Club begins with a lifestyle consultation with Susan Alexander, the on-site nutritionist. She had me step on her machine of doom which, in less than a minute, revealed that, while my muscle tone is high, so is my fat. My birth certificate suggests I’m 39; Susan’s machine identified the metabolism of a 50-year-old. Splendid.
Susan had thoughts on how to fix this biological glitch: eliminate gluten (“it causes toxic waste and inflammation”); give up dairy (“inflammatory”); consume more celery (to reduce water retention); go nuts for nuts. Her message was clear: stop eating so much.
At the Marbella Club, it’s easy to follow Susan’s Spartan diktats, and the lean but tasty fare provided just enough energy with which to learn – somewhat reluctantly on my part – how to relax. While this was an easy assignment to master in the impeccably maintained spa while having a facial, or a massage, my scepticism jolted me back to reality right around the time the Tibetan bowls came out. Noise is important said Alexandra, our therapist, who studied the “life-changing” art of Tibetan bowl therapy.
As she circled the reverberating bowls by my ears, all I could think of was an atonal concert my daughter and I had recently attended at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Neither experience was one I would wish to repeat. Trish, by contrast, skipped out happily: “I fell asleep!” she crowed. Was that the point?
Far more meditative, for me, was the two-mile sunrise run I took the next morning along the seafront, while Trish caught up on sleep.
In our four days at the club, Trish and I had three different trainers, which offered ample opportunity to get varied advice on a long-term fitness regime. Whether plucking TRX bands in a beautiful bamboo grove, or feeling the splash of water up through the pier in downward dog, it would be difficult to picture a more romantic place to exercise.
In my four days at the Marbella Club, I lost five pounds, and gained inspiration and a degree of optimism. And while I am not sure that Trisha has completely converted me to her belief in the hocus-pocus behind some of the treatments, it is true that I haven’t slept so well in years.
So how was it for you?
Essentials
A four-night Destress and Unwind stay at the Marbella Club with The Healthy Holiday Company (020 8968 0501; thehealthyholidaycompany.com) costs from ￡1,495 per person based on two sharing including B&B accommodation, two lifestyle consultations, three spa treatments, transfers and flights. Daily fitness and wellness classes are complimentary.
