Termáldomb

Termáldomb is the web name of the Kerekdombi Termálfürdő, a bath in the heart of the Great Plain on the Tisza, three kilometres outside Tiszakécske and roughly forty kilometres from both Kecskemét and Szolnok. Getting there without a car is unusually easy for a rural Hungarian bath: a bus stop and a railway halt stand immediately in front of the entrance, and the sightseeing road train that runs out from Tiszakécske also stops at the gate. The operator calls it a historic bath, half a century in operation, fully renovated and extended in 2014, and the bath is family rather than resort in character: a campsite next door, a weekly canteen menu, private function hire and a repeat clientele from the surrounding villages.

Claims for the water are kept narrow. The bath describes its medicinal water as anti-inflammatory and says it helps with pelvic inflammation and with gynaecological and urological conditions. Guests mention a children's pool, an adventure pool and a barefoot park laid out beside the sunbathing lawn.

The 2014 rebuild added a complete wellness wing holding Finnish, bio and infrared saunas, a salt chamber, an experience shower, a plunge pool and a jacuzzi. Its centrepiece is what the bath calls the largest wood-fired log-built Finnish sauna in the country: a cabin seating fifty, with two stoves that heat a tonne and a half of stones. It fires only for advertised sauna programmes run by professional sauna masters, and the infusions are held without swimwear. The bath was named Bath of the Year in 2015 in the locals' favourite category and is on the Hungarian Bath Association's list of qualified baths.