Following a successful trial at Sandy Lane, Owner Evan McKinney-Robinson has moved his custom built Sauna facility to a new site in Farndon. Evan was inspired to open the sauna after a cold water swimming regime helped him overcome mental health struggles. In the future he wants to create a permanent home for his creation.
“We’re currently searching for a space where we could create a mini sauna village in Chester. We’re looking for a yard-type space, maybe a Brownfield site we could turn into a wellness-orientated hospitality courtyard, canal-side perhaps, somewhere where the city is in need of a bit of regeneration. We’d have high quality mobile saunas & maybe a mobile coffee wagon or even a little bar. A small, covered event space with heating & protection from the elements.”
Evan created the Sauna after becoming disillusioned with his life as a corporate software engineer. “I have a lot of underlying mental health issues, I have some trauma and grief in my past. My Dad died just before the Covid lockdowns — and all of this combined triggered a lot of things for me.
“At the end of 2025 I came off medication whilst also taking on a high-pressure corporate tech job. I just felt completely miserable, completely trapped, burnt out & like I wasn’t doing anything meaningful with my life or showing up for my family — my beautiful wife and two amazing kids. So, I just ripped it off like a plaster & threw the towel in on corporate life, because I knew it wasn’t working out for me.”
He says he knew he wanted to start his own business and was also chasing a sense of freedom, made worse the isolation of the pandemic. “I’ve always been community minded” he says, having run charity events as DJ Steppin’ Ev. “I always found that really rewarding to give back to the community and fundraise for different charities. Often trauma-related charities like Cafe 71 / Spider Project, Kids Bank, Soul Kitchen & CATH. We also did some Palestine fundraisers – we’ve raised just under £6,000 through Steppin’ with Friends events so far.”
Evan’s journey took him towards cold water therapy & Nordic sauna culture and he decided to complete a cold water swimming challenge.
“I did 100 cold swims over 100 days. That included ice baths, cold plunges, swimming in the River Dee up at Eccleston when there was snow and ice on the ground. It was just remarkable how much of a difference-maker it could be on days where I couldn’t see past the bleakness of my psychology. The release and the rush of endorphins you get from making yourself really cold in nature is remarkable — it’s like a form of shock therapy that snaps you into the present moment — and it was the difference maker on so many days, where I just came out of the water feeling alive again, feeling really connected with myself, my family and my friends, and just able to enjoy that post-dip buzz for the rest of the day!”
“After building software for so long, I wanted to build something tangible. So, we built the sauna and we built it all to Finnish standards, because in the UK, there’s no regulation around how saunas are built. So, that’s why we’ve got this big movement of wild saunas popping up around the country at the moment. Across the country, there’s a growing number of trailer-based saunas like ours. A lot are built well but a lot of them aren’t built very well — and the difference maker is the standards that they have in Finland. Finland is the home of sauna. There’s 5 million people and 3 million saunas. So it gives you an idea of how much they love it over there. They’ve got a really well-defined process for building them over there and it’s very regulated and standardised.
“And it turns out that in the UK since we started putting saunas into our gyms, hotels and spas, they’ve been really poorly built compared to the really good quality versions you get in in the Nordic countries — particularly in Finland. Often there’s no ventilation so you can’t actually breathe when you’re in there. There’s no drainage for the water so you can’t throw water onto the rocks to create steam, which is an almost religious part of the experience for Finnish people. So when we built ours we studied Finnish design principles deeply, and also consulted with someone who knows them like the back of his hand”
The facility which is now at Farndon is “completely different to anything most people have experienced in the UK” says Evan. “We took a lot of care and consideration when we made it. Another key element is how interlinked authentic sauna culture is with cold water. So that’s often a missing link in the UK — we think of saunas as this thing that you go suffer in for 15 minutes after a workout and don’t really understand how it works. In a proper sauna session the idea is to go between hot and cold over a long duration of time. And that releases those happy hormones I mentioned before from the cold water aspect. Then the sauna is great for muscle relaxation, easing tension and really powerful for regulating your nervous system.
“There’s tons of other health benefits as well. It’s also just a great social space that gives you the kind of effect you’d get after having a couple of pints in the pub. You can have easy relaxed connections and conversations with people. So there’s that aspect of it too. We wanted to recreate something like they have in the Nordics and and also convey the sense of connection between nature and sauna. Traditionally sauna cabins were often in remote places — in woodland or by lakes and I think that’s another huge piece of the culture that’s missed from what we’ve experienced in gyms and spas and hotels in in the UK.
“That was the the idea and this is where we’ve ended up and we’ve built something really special. We’re really, really happy with how it’s all turned out. We’re looking to build more authentic saunas because I want there to be more of them in the world — that idea gives me a sense of meaning and purpose. We’re also looking for a long-term home in Chester somewhere, where we can make it more of a destination for wellness in general and a place where people can connect, sit together and have a coffee, a drink, or even a light bite to eat. That’s the dream for us.”
The Chester blog 