During your cure

Three weeks is a long time — long enough for a cure to stop being a treatment and become a stay. Here is what your days look like, and everything you can do with the time left over.

The rhythm of a cure

A prescribed cure means 18 days of treatment, Monday to Saturday — the spa is closed on Sundays and public holidays. Allow an hour and a half to two hours of treatment a day, usually in the morning, depending on your indication.

Your schedule is set before you arrive, based on your spa doctor's prescription. A cure card records all your treatments over the 18 days: it is used for your reimbursement, so keep it with you.

In rheumatology, the package includes 72 sessions, i.e. four treatments a day. In respiratory care, 108 sessions, i.e. six shorter treatments a day. Some variants include 9 or 18 physiotherapy sessions. Three visits to the spa doctor punctuate the stay.

What the treatments are like

The spa is a troglodytic building in Rognes stone, inspired by antiquity and dug into the hillside. The water arrives naturally hot, rich in calcium and sodium sulphates, magnesium and trace elements, after an underground journey of more than 1,200 metres.

In rheumatology, you alternate bath-tub and thermal-pool baths, weightless mud baths, jet showers, underwater showers, local clay poultices, hand and foot showers, a hydromassage bed, the Thermabike, underwater massages, mobilisation sessions in the pool and sweating in an individual cabin.

In respiratory care, the programme is based on nasal baths, gargles, irrigations, sprays, inhalations, individual and sonic aerosols, postural drainage and respiratory rehabilitation. Three treatments are carried out by the spa doctor: the pharyngeal shower, Eustachian tube insufflation and the Proetz displacement method.

Both indications can be prescribed together.

What to do with the rest of the day

This is where Gréoux changes character. The treatments free your afternoons, and the village is made for it.

In the morning, the market. Several markets are held each week in the spa town, and others move around the neighbouring villages. Banon cheese, olive oils, lavender, soaps, seasonal fruit and vegetables: another way to give rhythm to the week.

In the afternoon, walking. The spa town has 150 hectares of green spaces — the Morelon, thermal and Olivia parks — and 125 kilometres of footpaths start from the village. Along the banks of the Verdon, fifteen open-air fitness stations are freely accessible, designed for all ages and all levels.

The village itself. The 12th-century Templars' castle overlooks the Verdon. The church of Notre-Dame des Ormeaux, the chapels, cobbled lanes, fountains and wash-houses can be discovered at leisure, with no programme.

In the evening. The casino opens every day in late morning, with slot machines, tables and daily entertainment. The Congress Centre cinema has two screens and holds open-air screenings in summer. The Lucien Jacques media library is free for everyone, visitors included — and an annex library operates inside the baths themselves, Monday to Friday.

Social life. It is what people talk about least and often what they remember most: a bridge club, belote tournaments, Scrabble in the Morelon park, a seniors' club two afternoons a week, pétanque under the plane trees. Three weeks is plenty of time to settle into a routine.

The season calendar

The thermal season opens in March with the Rendez-vous de Printemps and closes in December. In between: open-air concerts on the Placette Pauline from Friday to Sunday, April to October; the Soirées de l'Étoile at the Congress Centre from March to November except July and August; the Gréoux Jazz Festival and Gréoux de Janeiro in summer; the Automne Musical and the Foire aux Santons in autumn.