Est. 2024
One house deposit, one stove, and a very cold loch
Hot Tottie started when Kieran, a scientist who spent his days studying the immune system, decided the best thing for his own health was to blow his house deposit on a sauna. His mortgage adviser has not been in touch since. The saunas we wanted to visit either did not exist in Scotland or cost more than a weekend away. So we built one, dragged it onto the beach at Luss, and lit it. The first few months were 100 hour weeks, an a lot of firewood, and learning everything the damp way.
We are not a wellness brand
We are a brother and sister who run saunas on lochs, which is not a sentence either of us expected to say. Nobody here will ask you to set an intention. If someone calls in sick, one of us loads the stove. If something breaks on a Saturday, one of us is up a ladder with a spanner. We do not take ourselves seriously. We take your experience very seriously. Hot stove, cold loch, no fuss, no faff, and no reception desk with cucumber water.
That is also why the prices are what they are. We are not paying for a spa reception.
How we got here
- July 2024
One wood-fired sauna on the beach at Luss. Zero days off, a lot of learning and a loch that does not care how tired you are.
- Late 2024
Turns out not everyone wanted a sauna on their beach. We ended up in the papers and in front of a planning hearing. We won. Then we hired our first crew, so Kieran could finally sleep.
- Early 2025
Opened site number two at Dumbrock Loch. It was going great, right up until the council drained the loch. You cannot dook in a puddle, so we packed up and moved to Rowardennan.
- May 2025
Took the sauna on the road to a festival in Edinburgh, because apparently we had not made life hard enough for ourselves. Lauren came on board as co-director.
- 2026
A year at Rowardennan, then told to leave with three weeks' notice. Cheers for that. So we came home. Dumbrock is back, Luss got a full glow-up, and there is now a crew of 11 keeping the stoves roaring.
- Next
We may or may not have bought a boat. A very warm boat. Watch this space. And no, we are still not buying cucumber water.
The crew
The people who actually light your sauna
