How I learned to tackle burnout like an ancient Greek

An overpowering stench of rotten egg rises from clouds of steam surrounding a bathtub-sized hole. It was carved out of the rocks here several millennia ago.

Shivering in the late spring breeze whisking off the bay beneath me, I slip into my swimsuit and slide inside. Worn by the bodies of countless bathers, the stone is silky soft. I soon forget the eggy scent of sulphur as I sink up to my neck in the hot spring waters and watch the sun descend in a scarlet blaze over the bay where Agamemnon sheltered with his warships on his way to Troy.

I’m in the remote town of Edipsos in northern Evia on the first stage of my journey to see if Greece’s mineral-rich waters, which the ancient Greeks once prescribed for treating “imbalances in the humours” and akidia (brain fatigue), can heal my writer’s burnout.

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Bubbling out of the ground at 35C, Edipsos’s mineral-rich springs – that were “sent by the gods for healing” according to ancient Greek philosopher Pausanias – have been popular with “greats”, ranging from Aristotle and Strabo since the 4th century BC. A celebrity magnet right up until the late 20th century, stars including Greta Garbo, Omar Sharif, and Maria Callas once flocked here in their bathing suits and budgie smugglers to “take the waters”.

Read more: Where to find your perfect Greece holiday destination

In the post-war years, however, when holistic treatments were replaced by quick-fix chemical cures, Edipsos’s glitzy hotels went out of fashion. Nowadays, the resort has plenty of abandoned buildings. With their peeling ochre facades and gaping windows, they frame weed-tangled alleyways criss-crossed with rivulets of steaming spring water where endangered tortoises love to hibernate.

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I’m staying at Thermae Syllae. Edipsos’s first spa hotel, which opened in 1896, it’s one of the few resorts that have remained open. Named for a Roman general who was cured of a mysterious skin disease here in 84BC, the resort has won countless awards for its hot-spring-fed pools and medical spa complex. Wrapped from top to toe in slimy thermal mud in one of…