Logging Out: New FT piece and Machynlleth
Hey,
My new piece just came out in the Financial Times. “How to build a sauna: ‘somewhere between a chapel and a pub’. It’s about building saunas; my passion and greatest interest at the moment.
Top left!
This is the link: https://on.ft.com/3QMjN5D
It features photos by my dear friend, Severin Domela.
It’s all about my friend Simon Robert’s sauna, nestled in the hills of Wales. It’s an otherworldly spot.
Simon is passionate about saunas, and good food. He writes about their intersection. A good meal after a long sauna session is a life changing experience.
He has just made a Substack!
I have been working with Heartwood Saunas, lately, building saunas in a workshop, half way up a mountain, outside Machynlleth.
Here are some photos of our staff sauna. (soon to be public sauna)
Saunas cost between 40 - 80 grand and have a 22 month wait list.
Kind of mad.
In fact, Machynlleth is generally quite mad.
As you know, it’s home to Heartwood - perhaps most high end sauna workshop in the UK…
And Dyfi Bike Park, apparently the best mountain biking park in the UK, designed and built by mountain biking legend, Dan Atherton.
And Atherton Cycles - some of the most high end mountain bikes in the UK, all designed and manufactured in town.
And Red Shoes… award winning shoemakers, shipping bespoke hand made shoes all around the world. (A pair of shoes cost upward of £600 pounds. They are designed for your feet.)
And The Centre for Alternative Technology, in internationally renowned institution, teaching practical sustainability (for the last 50 years), through architecture, design, construction, and policy.
Most of my new friends in town study there.
And the result is a buzzy little town… which is apparently one of very few in Wales, with a growing young population.
Sending my love,
Sebastian
By the way, Riff Raff is on it’s way down to London. My friend is going to live on it, then it will become an art retreat. More on that to come.
(my radio show from last week - skip to 2 minutes, some cracklin at the start https://www.mixcloud.com/radiodyfi/sebastian-sebastians-room/)