WHAT better way to enjoy time with a loved one than with panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean, whilst sitting in a relaxing hot sauna?
This Valentine's Day, Limavady couple Anna and Carl Isaksson will be doing just that, as they enjoy some time enjoying their unique sea sauna all to themselves on their day off, as well as a meal out at a Portstewart seafood restaurant.
The Northern Irish and Swedish couple are the owners of Hotbox – a mobile traditional Finnish wood-burning sauna – which is situated on Benone Beach on the North Coast.
Whilst a couple of seaside saunas have recently sprung up in the Republic, this is the first beach sauna to reach the north's sandy shores.
Given the current popularity for cold water swimming, it comes as no surprise that the new business venture is sparking a lot of interest.
"My friends and I started sea swimming a couple of years ago, and people thought we were mental braving the icy waters. Now every single day we are down here there are people constantly getting into the water," says 32-year-old Anna.
"During lockdown people took to getting outside and engaging with the natural elements and sea swimming has just really taken off. It's lovely to see."
So how did Hotbox come about? That's not a simple answer for the couple, who met in Verbier in the Swiss Alps in 2015, where Carl was a ski instructor and Anna was working as a chalet manager, during time travelling after completing an architecture degree.
What followed was adventures in Japan, Canada and time spent with Carl's family, outside Gothenburg, whilst he was getting treatment for the blood cancer lymphoma.
Thankfully recovered, but too late to secure skiing jobs the following season, the couple's next adventure took them to Scotland, where they ran a bar and restaurant in a caravan park belonging to Anna's relatives.
Engaged and looking to the future, the couple put in a bid for an old school property back in Northern Ireland, hoping to convert it into a chic hostel, complete with a sauna. However, over a year later after their bid was successfully received, the property exchange fell through.
Undeterred Anna did return to Limavady with Carl to get married and start their family. An article about a mobile sauna in Wicklow lit a spark and, accompanied by their eight-week-old son Sixten, they set off on a discovery roadtrip and immediately knew what they wanted to do next.
"We had a bit of background knowledge because Carl is Swedish and sauna culture is huge in Scandinavia, where many homes have their own sauna."
Whilst the Covid pandemic and lockdown delayed their plans, it did allow them plenty of time to carefully plan, create and design their own bespoke mobile sauna.
"Finland has the highest standards when it comes to saunas and it was important to us that our sauna was built by people who specialise in Finnish saunas. We also used local craftspeople to build the framework and do the final fit out.
"We've had a few Finnish people who have come to our sauna and said it's just like what they would see back home. We were delighted we are actually up to Finnish standards," enthuses Anna.
Whilst their sauna trailer is free to roam the Irish countryside, it's the long sandy beach at Benone - with a dramatic backdrop including views of Magilligan Point in the east, Mussenden Temple in the west, and Donegal just across the water – where HotBox can be found every Thursday to Sunday.
"At first we were planning to travel more, but we soon realised that at Benone we accidentally landed on the most perfect place. The location is stunning, there are toilets, a coffee shop and surf school," adds 35-year-old Carl, who has seen many clients travel to the area from Donegal, Galway and Dublin.
The sauna seats up to six people at a time. When you arrive, there is a changing room in which you change into your bathers and go either straight into the sauna, or do it the Nordic way and have a quick dip in the cold sea first.
Afterwards you can retreat and unwind in the warmth of the sauna, and when you get too hot you can cool down outside or jump back into the ocean, and so forth.
"Even if you have a cold plunge, it's not quite the same as going and diving into the sea. I think that is why it works so well.
"Back home we would do it in conjunction with an activity like cross-country skiing. Here it works well with running, cold-water swimming and surfing," adds Carl.
There are many health benefits to using a sauna and sea sauna-ing in particular.
In the sauna, your body releases more endorphins (the happy hormone) and lowers the levels of cortisol it produces (the stress hormone), therefore it's excellent for helping with stress and chronic pain.
It also helps reduce blood pressure, relieve respiratory symptoms, improve cardiovascular health and even reduce the likelihood of developing Alzheimer's.
Carl vows for it helping "give you a good night's sleep", and while pregnant women should limit their time spent in extreme heat, Anna, who is currently expecting her second child, says it helped cure her morning sickness.
Whilst the sauna is associated with Scandinavia, there is also an Irish tradition, dating back to the 'sweat houses' of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The remnants of one of the best preserved sweat houses here can be found nestled in Tirkane, just two miles outside the Co Derry town of Maghera.
"They had these little mounds that they dug holes into and had a fire in there. If the rural workers had rheumatism or caught a cold they were ordered to go. It wasn't a pleasant experience.
"It has a river running next to it so I would assume that they would have jumped into that afterwards to cool off – similar to our idea now of going into the hot sauna and coming out and having a cold swim" says Carl.
"We've also discovered that every year before the Lammas fair in Ballycastle people would go to the sweat houses and use it as a way to improve their complexion," adds Anna.
Thankfully, Hotbox is way more luxurious and included in their Hot Slots are scented water and a few Finnish accessories to add to the ritual, including Finnish vihta.
"These are dried up birch branches that are tied together in a bouquet and you're supposed to hit yourself with it to increase circulation. Their leaves contain an antibacterial property. It's a very authentic sauna utensil in Finland – you can even buy them in the supermarkets over there," explains Anna.
For the romantics out there, the Hotbox can be privately hired out for two, with an added beauty box complete with a locally made body scrub and Neal's Yard Remedies balms and oils for that post-sauna glow.
And while there haven't been any Hotbox marriage proposals yet, they have recently had a couple come to celebrate after saying "I do".
