hips don't lie: Spa weekends for WAGs: Cosying up to the footballers at Mottram Hall, Cheshire

By

Anna Melville-james.

PUBLISHED:

04:05 EST, 27 June 2013

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UPDATED:

04:05 EST, 27 June 2013

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I would make a terrible WAG.

It is not just the lack of hair extensions and my milky-white complexion. I would not recognise a footballer if he launched a two-footed tackle in my direction.

“How can you not have known you were checking in next to Paul Dickov?” my despairing other half Drew asks when I call him that night from my room at Cheshire’s most glamorous golf and spa hotel.

The best I can do is shrug and tell him that I think someone called Carlos Tevez may have said hello to our three-year-old daughter Claudie that afternoon.

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Footballers’ lives: It was all lost on Anna, but Mottram Hall regularly plays host to Premiership footballers

The receiver thumps loudly as it drops to the floor. Hello? Hello?

Claudie and I are spending a weekend at Mottram Hall, where Cheshire’s affluent great and good – including a hefty proportion of the UK’s top footballers – come to play golf while their wives and girlfriends indulge in “me-time” with workouts, spa treatments and champagne.

Mottram had its own facelift last July with a complete refurbishment, and a celebrity-heavy relaunch back in April. The hotel’s big draw is the championship golf course that swims around the property like a vast green sea. It draws in everyone from Manchester City strikers Tevez and Sergio Aguero (though the former, I should add, will not be seen here for much longer, as he is being transferred to Juventus – ah, the joys of being able to research via Google) to the recently retired Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson (now the captain of the Mottram Hall golf club) for a round.

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Rural chic: Mottram Hall has had a spruce with ‘modern country house’ the theme behind the refurbishment

The idea behind the refurbishment was to create a country house vibe – for those who buy country houses with their pocket change, but are not terribly interested in inherited antiques or drafty rooms.

The creative brains behind the redesign have done a lovely job in turning what were 1970s conference rooms into elegant garden salons with long windows and even longer sofas where you can have afternoon tea. Alternatively, if it is that time of day, you can call for cocktails from a bar – serviced by dapper waiters in Harris tweed – which sits on the other side of the sweeping hallway.

With its new-money spin on an old classic, Mottram feels a little like a theme park – perhaps it should be called ‘Countrylodgeland’ – where tartan decor and antlers pinned to the golf clubhouse walls clash with the giant TV screens and designer clothing labels. There is also a FA-approved football training ground where clubs such as Yeovil and Barnsley come to practice corners.

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WAG wishlist: Anna finds her inner footballer’s wife with a manicure (left) and a go in the Body Conclusio (right)

To spend the day here, you have to be a member of the spa, while golfers have to be a member or pay a green fee. But if you stay here you can try both of the hotel’s raisons d’etre.

Thwack a ball around 18 holes – or a massage?

Perhaps I am more WAG than I realise, because there is no contest as I read the spa menu over room service in our elegant grey and white lakeside suite, while Canada Geese honk loudly on the water outside the window.

The health club is as sleek as its users. The gym has five personal trainers and TechnoGym Cloud equipment that synchs with your smartphone so that you can track your progress on the machines.

There are also plenty of whippet-thighed women who obviously make full use of the juice bar. And two lovely swimming pools – to which, the hotel manager assures me, the former cricketer Andrew Flintoff often brings his kids. Sadly he is not there (I think) as we splash around happily.

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Girls’ weekend: Anna and Claudie take time out from the spa (left) and look for Carlos Tevez in the garden (right)

I am pretty sure that we are not meant to, but Claudie and I also try out the indoor and outdoor jacuzzis, and press our noses against the amazing saunas. This is super sauna-ing. All three of the huge cedar rooms have one sheet-glass side, so you can see outside – a handy situation if you happen to suffer from claustrophobia. One sauna has a floor covered in pine needles while another has an industrial revolution-style iron contraption that ladles water onto the coals automatically.

Impressed, we make our way back through the changing rooms, with their bank of GHD hair straighteners and mock snakeskin pouffes, and stop to admire the UK’s first Body Conclusio – a open shell-like machine which allows you to have a steam-bath as you sit within. It is meant to be for people who do not like to be shut in with too much heat – but I imagine that it is also popular with those who do not want to muss up their hair. The feeling, however, is one of sitting in a warm captain’s chair on the Starship Enterprise. I cannot decide if that is a good thing.

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Knock on wood: The saunas have large windows overlooking the outdoors

The plush spa itself offers the sort of extensive menu of luxurious treatments – or ‘everyday maintenance’ if you will – that you would expect for its highly polished clientele.

Afterwards, spa-goers can eat Bento boxes and drink virgin Mojitos in the attached dining room, or come upstairs in their waffle gowns for a glass of bubbly. I opt for an energising aromatherapy massage. Oh, and a manicure. Well, when in Cheshire…

At this point, I enlist the help of a local friend to come and take over the small matter of childcare. To be honest, there is not a lot in the way of children’s facilities at Mottram – apart from the pool, evening babysitting, cots and warm milk on request.

But who cares when kind staff will happily grant a toddler’s wish to ride on a golf cart? When I finally emerge from the spa, suitably robed and duly energised, I pick up my daughter – who has been whizzing around the grounds for the past hour, presumably charming footballers as she goes.

True, neither of us know who the hotel’s starry clientele might be. But as far as the final score is concerned, it is definitely one-nil to Mottram Hall for a girly weekend.

Travel Facts

A double room at Mottram Hall starts from £105 per night including breakfast. Call 0871 222 4686 or see www.devere-hotels.co.uk.

Anna travelled on Virgin Trains. Tickets from London Euston to Wilmslow cost from £25 return. Journey time is one hour and 47 minutes. Call 0871 977 4222 or visit www.virgintrains.com.