The Voya Seaweed Baths: What to Expect

The building on Shore Road that most visitors know as Voya Seaweed Baths carries on a tradition that goes back further than most of Strandhill itself. The land here was undeveloped until 1895, when Benjamin Murrow bought it and started selling plots along a road he named Buenos Ayres Drive. In 1912, to give day-trippers a reason to come out from Sligo, he built a bathhouse drawing on the older Irish custom of seaweed bathing. That custom is what Voya, founded in 2000 by Sligo man Neil Walton, set out to revive.

How it started

Walton, a former junior triathlete, learned about seaweed's therapeutic properties from fellow athletes while studying in Australia and came home determined to bring the tradition back to his own town. His brother Mark and Mark's wife Kira joined the business in 2006, and together they launched a range of organic seaweed-based cosmetics under the same name, now sold internationally. The bathhouse itself has grown into one of the better-known stops on the Wild Atlantic Way, drawing something in the region of forty thousand visitors a year.

What a session actually involves

A booking gets you a private room with a bath and, in most room types, a steam cabinet, for somewhere between fifty and seventy-five minutes depending on which package you choose. Hand-harvested Atlantic seaweed, gathered under licence, is steeped in hot water, and the steam beforehand is meant to open the pores so the seaweed's minerals can do more work in the bath itself. It is marketed as improving circulation and skin condition, and whatever the wellness claims add up to, an hour in hot seawater with a steam room attached is a genuinely good way to spend a wet Strandhill afternoon.

Room options range from a single bath and steam through to two-person suites with sea views, the priciest of which run to something like a hundred and thirty euro for a longer, seventy-five-minute session; the single-person option is considerably cheaper. Prices move, so check the current list before booking rather than relying on last year's figure.

Booking

Book ahead, particularly at weekends and through the summer months, when the baths fill up alongside the beach and the surf schools. Walk-ins do happen but aren't something to plan a visit around. The baths sit right on Shore Road, a few minutes from most of the village's restaurants and cafes, so it slots naturally into an afternoon that already includes lunch and a walk on the beach.

Worth knowing

The baths are indoors and heated, which makes them one of the better wet-weather options in a village otherwise built around an outdoor beach and a hillwalk. If a storm has come in off the Atlantic and the surf lesson is off, Voya is usually still open.