Hellweg-Sole-Thermen

The Hellweg-Sole-Thermen are a brine bath at Weringhauser Straße 17 in Bad Westernkotten, the state-recognised spa district of Erwitte in the Soest district of North Rhine-Westphalia. Salt has shaped the place for more than a thousand years and was produced commercially until 1949; the brine is now used only for treatment and bathing. The spa draws on two state-recognised healing springs: the Westernkottener Warte spring in the northern part of the Kurpark, drilled in 1845 and yielding brine of 8.1 per cent strength, and the Westernfelder Solequelle of 1965, whose salt content is 7 per cent. A second local remedy, natural moor cut in the neighbouring Muckenbruch reserve, has been used in therapy for over sixty years.

The bathing hall offers more than 1,300 m² of water surface filled with diluted Bad Westernkötter natural brine. The operator gives a water temperature of 32 to 34 °C and a salt content of 3 to 4 per cent, with a maximum depth of 1.34 m in the swimming pool; elsewhere the operator gives a slightly wider range of 32 to 35 °C. A large indoor pool connects directly to the outdoor pool so that lengths can be swum between them, two smaller exercise pools indoors are reserved for the water course programme, and two further whirlpools are filled with fresh water. Massage jets and bubble beds are distributed through the pools. A quiet room on the ground floor looks out over the garden and ends in a round glass turret used as a silent room with infrared heating.

Upstairs, reached only by a staircase, is a 1,200 m² sauna landscape with six textile-free themed saunas named after the stone and landscape of the surrounding Hellweg region: the Westernkötter salt-stone sauna, the Erwitte limestone sauna, the Brilon slate sauna, the Geseke witch sauna, the Anröchte green sandstone sauna and the Lippstädter Lippeauen mist room. Temperatures run from 40 to 100 °C. The area has a plunge pool, a foot pool, an experience shower, a fireplace lounge and a rest room, and Tuesdays are reserved as a women's sauna day.

The house also runs a therapy centre with physiotherapy and remedial gymnastics, a wellness and cosmetics department using the local moor, and courses ranging from aqua fitness to children's swimming. The water world opens daily from 08:00 to 21:00, with last admission an hour before closing; the sauna normally opens from 09:00 to 21:00, but between 1 July and 30 September it closes on Wednesdays and Thursdays.