Escape Sauna
Escape sits within the Castleton Farm family of businesses on the East Lothian coast — alongside Drift and Seek — and occupies a specific and genuinely remarkable location. The sauna is positioned below the main farm, out of sight, reached via a winding path through sea buckthorn that opens onto views of the Bass Rock and the Firth of Forth. A natural sea water pool sits close by for cold plunges. The whole experience, from the moment guests park, is designed to draw them progressively further away from the everyday.
That sense of arrival — the path, the landscape, the gradual reveal — is built into the physical experience. The brand and digital presence needed to communicate it before anyone had even booked.
The brief
Joanna McNicol came to us with a clear vision and a sauna already purchased. The task was to build the brand and the booking infrastructure that would bring the experience to market — and to do so in a way that felt connected to the wider Castleton Farm identity without being absorbed by it.
Escape needed its own distinct character. The palette the brief pointed towards was immediate and right: the orange of sea buckthorn berries against the blues of the coastal landscape. A specific, place-rooted combination that gave the identity both visual energy and genuine grounding in the environment the experience inhabits.
The brand had to work across signage on the sauna itself, merchandise — enamel mugs, towels, future dry robes — Drift's social media channels and the booking website. Each application required the identity to hold up at different scales and in different contexts, from a printed label on a branded flask of Castleton Farm apple juice to a digital booking confirmation.
The identity
The visual direction drew directly from the landscape. Sea buckthorn orange paired with coastal blues — bold, natural and specific to this place in a way that generic wellness branding rarely achieves. The colour combination carries energy and warmth while the surrounding blues ground it in something calm and expansive.
The brand sits within the established Castleton Farm visual family — connecting fonts and a coherent design language across Drift, Seek and Escape — while having enough of its own character to function as a distinct experience. The tagline Drift to Escape acknowledges that connection directly, signalling to guests already familiar with the wider farm that this is a natural extension of something they already know and trust.
The identity was designed with the physical touchpoints in mind from the outset. Branded enamel mugs, flasks, signage directing guests from the car park, the sauna exterior itself — these were all part of the brief rather than afterthoughts, which shaped decisions about how the mark needed to function across materials and surfaces.
The website
The digital brief was operationally demanding. A booking platform that needed to handle multiple session types — open saunas with individual hot-seat bookings alongside private hire — as well as packages, gift vouchers, add-on food experiences and event listings. Session times and capacity needed to be manageable by both the owner and the sauna host directly through a scheduling app, without requiring developer involvement every time something changed.
The Squarespace build integrated scheduling functionality that gave the team genuine day-to-day control. Hours can be updated, promotional slots pushed, events added and gift vouchers issued without external support. The host manages their own session schedule through the associated app — a practical requirement for a business where the person running the experience is also the person managing the bookings.
The food add-on experience required its own consideration within the booking flow. Sweet and savoury options — branded flasks of warm Castleton Farm apple juice, soup, Drift smoked venison pastrami, Edinburgh Butter and Drift pickles — are presented clearly as additions to a standard session booking, with the logistics handled through the system rather than manually. That kind of operational detail, built into the booking architecture rather than managed through a separate channel, reduces friction for both the guest and the team considerably.
Words from the client
“We have been working with Sarah now for 5 years. The impact she has made has been incredible. Our business has grown and she’s grown with it. Last year, we took the decision to rebrand. Not always easy when your brand is well known, however, recognising our coffeehouse had moved into more of an eatery it felt important our brand reflected that. Eat, drink, relax has always been our tag line and we wanted a brand which reflected it. Something softer, still drifting but something that also spoke of the landscape. In our opinion, Sarah delivered just that. It’s been well received by our existing customers and many have commented on it through our socials.”
Since launch
What launched as a single sauna is now two. The brand and platform were built with enough flexibility to accommodate that growth without requiring structural rework — a reflection of building things properly from the start rather than at minimum viable scope.
The booking system handles the operational complexity of two saunas, multiple session formats and seasonal variation without requiring constant attention. Escape has become an established part of the Castleton Farm experience and a destination in its own right for wild swimmers, cold water and heat therapy enthusiasts and anyone looking for something genuinely different on the East Lothian coast.
What it adds up to
Escape is a good example of what happens when a distinctive physical experience is matched by a brand and digital infrastructure that's equally considered. The setting does the experiential work. The brand communicates it before a guest arrives. The website handles the operational complexity so the team can focus on the experience itself.
All three need to work. Here, they do.
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