Feel the heat

Good evening. A new documentary about Estonia’s sauna tradition has been a surprise hit, with viewers loving the insight into the lives of the women featured in Smoke Sauna Sisterhood and the intimate sanctuary it provides. Our writer Rachel Dixon went to visit one of the saunas where the film was made, hidden deep in a forest south-east of Tartu, and joined in the rituals, swimming in icy ponds, warming up in the sauna, being "whisked" with dried leaves and even shrieking when encouraged to "let it all out". As she wrote: “A sauna is a sacred space to Estonians – one where babies were once born, and the dead tended to – and, even to an outsider, it feels safe.” There are over 100,000 saunas of different types in the country, including affordable public saunas (of which Tallinn, the capital, has six alone). “I left Estonia wondering why Britain, another chilly northern European nation, doesn’t have its own sauna tradition. It may not get as cold as Estonia, but winter can be long, dark, wet and miserable.” Which is why we've also rounded up some of the pop-up saunas around the UK for your convenience.