Mary Earps: “I want to be a lone wolf in my hotel room”

Goalkeeper Mary Earps loves a clean sheet. She also loves a fantastic hotel bath and a good spa. “Given my career choice, I love diving in the mud; it’s my favorite thing to do, so it’s super important to recover in our downtime,” says the Manchester United women’s team star, who also helped the England national team win 2022’s UEFA Women’s Euro Final and place second in the following year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup. “I love it when hotels have spas,” she says of what she looks for in her perfect stay. “Ice pools, plunge pools—hot and cold.”  

Play Video

It’s hard to believe that not long ago—2021 to be exact—Earps almost gave up playing altogether. Thankfully, a new coach at United helped her reignite her passion for the game (and play her way back into the national side), with the Nottingham native since winning the 2023 England Women’s Player of the Year award, BBC Sports Personality of the Year and the FIFA Best Women’s Goalkeeper award for a second consecutive year, making her the world’s top-ranked female goalkeeper.  

Of course, competing at the highest level comes at a cost to the body. “I get lots of cuts and scratches and bruises all over the place; quite a lot of dead legs as well,” she says. “So a spa day every now and again, especially at the hotel, I think that that’s really great. Sometimes with the team we get to go to nice hotels and go to the saunas and the steam rooms.” 

One of her most restorative hotel experiences was at a five-star property in England’s northeast. “Rockliffe Hall hotel in Middlesbrough is great, with a massive spa—it’s outdoors, really nice!” As she recalls, “The whole team was there; we tend to get to the spa at maybe 8 or 9 because otherwise the four members of the public just get their whole relaxing spa evening completely ambushed by a massive group of football players.” The property’s garden also offers an infinity pool, glass-fronted sauna, and heat-radiating daybeds, plus an indoor hydropool, salt steam room, infrared room, igloo, and other wellness amenities to spring the body back to life.  

Bouncing back mentally from the intensity of the game is another matter, and Earps has a winning hotel strategy for that, too: quiet solitude. “I want to be a lone wolf in my hotel room; then I just live by my own rules, my own ways—that’s what we all want, right?”  

While millions have witnessed Earps’s wildly celebratory, gregarious side on live TV—see her viral post-Euros press-conference table dance—she often embodies some classic solitary goalkeeper traits. It is, after all, a position Vladimir Nabokov once called “Aloof, solitary, impassive,” while The Telegraph’s sportswriter Jim White described it as, “a lonely calling, an individual isolated within a team ethic.”

For Earps, however, this self-sufficiency is blissful: “I like to have a good sleep, bath, massage, low-level relaxing… And reading books—I love to read, especially on holiday.” The Mayia Exclusive Resort & Spa in Rhodes is a hotel she looks forward to visiting for a relaxing getaway, while Macdonald La Ermita Resort on Spain’s Costa del Sol and Jamaica’s Negril Tree House Resort make good choices, as well. 

In terms of her next perfect escape, “Mexico would be a really great place to be, in the Viceroy in the Riviera Maya—it’s been very highly recommended to me and it’s supposed to be stunning,” she says. The beachfront resort promises just the type of relaxation Earps appreciates, including an infinity pool, private plunge pools, soaking tubs, and beach massages. Because between matches and those 90 minutes of mental and physical pressure, “I’m looking for tranquility, peace—lying horizontal for 10 to 14 days.”  

Martina Sheehan

Writer

Martina Sheehan is a Chicago-based travel writer-editor who has written for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler, Budget Travel, Forbes Travel Guides, and Time Out guidebooks, among others. She has traveled to 38 countries and 46 states, and never leaves home without a good map app, a themed playlist, and her daughter.