Crete: a loofah’s guide

THE only difficult part of a visit to the Blue Palace Resort and Spa on Crete comes at Heraklion airport afterwards. There you sit in the hangar-like departure lounge, feeling all soft and serene and redolent of your last rejuvenating grape-seed scrub — and you can’t help noticing that all the other returning British tourists are sporting virulent nut-brown tans that will allow them to look good in skimpy apparel for months to come.

Suddenly, you start to question yourself. Should I really have spent several hours a day indoors, having my skin plumped, caressed, wrapped and scraped, when the sun was blazing away outside? Look at these people. When they get home, everyone will say: “You look as if you’ve had a really good holiday!” For an awful moment, you can get no consolation from the fact that their epidermis is now so tough and leathery that they can strike matches on their inner thighs. You feel pale. You feel namby-pamby. You feel you have, obscurely, let the side down.

But, as I say, that’s the only bad moment. Otherwise, a trip to the Blue Palace is a bit like heaven. Just into its fourth season of business, this peaceful resort is set on a beautiful and otherwise undeveloped stretch of steep north Cretan coast, two miles from Elounda, and has a dramatic east-facing view towards the deserted island of Spinalonga, set perfectly in the embrace of a natural bay.

The lucky occupants of each of the 204 rooms share the daily miracle of the sun rising over Spinalonga, with the sea’s tranquil dazzle augmented by the effect of cleverly placed turquoise swimming pools. Sigh. Deep, deep sigh. “Did you visit Elounda?” people asked afterwards. “You must have done Knossos, or the Samaria Gorge? Maybe you only popped down to the neighbouring village of Plaka?” Sigh. Big, big sigh. No, I just got up every morning, opened the curtains and slid the patio door, then dangled my feet in the salt-water swimming pool and swooned afresh at the sparkling blueness.

Spas are everywhere these days, of course. But I was quite surprised to hear of a five-star resort (a member of the US-run Starwood collection of luxury hotels) popping up in Greece. I’ve spent quite a lot of time on Greek islands in the past few years, and this is the first time I’ve experienced anything so grand as a bathplug, so it was a shock to get not only a private pool but something called “ultimate guest service” — a team of enthusiastic and well-dressed young people who would gladly book my table for dinner or pop along with a power adapter. I must have seemed a bit like a heathen, forever exclaiming over the miracle of air-conditioning (honestly, I have stayed in hotels before), but the standard was just so very unfamiliar in an Aegean setting. Some things about Greece I did miss, such as the cats. But some things I didn’t miss, such as the shouting.

Of course, the biggest contrast was in the attitude to water. On my usual Greek island (in the Dodecanese), all the water has to be delivered by weekly boat from Rhodes; it can actually run out, especially if you are foolish enough to take a property too far up the hill. The Blue Palace, being a classy thalassotherapy spa, was unlikely to ask its patrons not to waste water, but it still felt sinful to wash quite so often. For ecological reasons, I still didn’t let the tap run while cleaning my teeth. But this was a token gesture, merely. Most of the time, the alternative to yet another shower is to walk around with a lump of rejuvenating grape seed stuck in one’s navel, so there doesn’t seem to be much choice in the matter.

And, actually, I relished all the wet-dry-wet-dry aspect of a day at the spa. It began to seem quite normal: into a jet bath of sea water laced with aromatic Cretan herbs, then under a freshwater shower; then a vigorous towelling; then wrapped in “striking frozen cucumber”, then the shower again; then drying off, then a dip in the pool.

In the old days of “water cures”, of course, this sort of regime would be dressed up as medicine; the mentally infirm or physically spindly would be wrapped in damp sheets or hosed with icy water to treat their gout, constipation, melancholy or hysteria. In the 19th century, hydropathy (literally “water death”) was emphatically not linked with pleasure.

Now, however, the client calls the shots, does not flirt with pneumonia, and just has the treatments that sound nice. I opted for a three-day course of exfoliation, body wraps and facial masks called “The Elounda Glow”, described in the brochure as a “calming, luxurious and sensual experience”. Only afterwards did I read a comment by the spa’s manager that this was the programme most popular with visitors from the US — “because it doesn’t involve any exercise”.

Naturally, the spa building itself is all calming white curtains and terracotta pots, with sea-shells and pebbles in buckets. Extremely restful, save for one thing: the piped music. Yes, there had to be a drawback to this otherwise perfect place, and here it was: Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina played on an electronically simulated Peruvian nose-flute. God, that electronically simulated nose-flute effect was irritating. If it wasn’t Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina, it was Robbie Williams’s Angels or John Denver’s Annie’s Song. I’d find myself singing the words; and then wanting to shoot myself. “You fill up my senses, like a walk in the forest; like a dum-di-di springtime; like a walk in the rain.”

The same music was played in the main restaurant, and I grumbled so loudly about it that, when it changed after four days, my companion believed that my rantings must have been overheard by someone in authority. But this was not the case, evidently. On the sixth day we sat down to another splendid buffet breakfast to the strains of an electronically simulated nose-flute version of Abba’s Thank You For the Music, and all we could do was burst into tears.

But otherwise: what a great place to relax. The resort has five superb restaurants and a beautiful outdoor terrace bar. Parts of the site are connected by a comically inadequate lift, which glides up the hill from beach to reception at a snail’s pace and can hold only ten people at a time: come high summer, when there may be upwards of 400 people in the resort, the best policy would be to sit near by, watch, and laugh.

A good idea for a trip to the Blue Palace, by the way, is to pack a copy of Victoria Hislop’s novel The Island (just out in paperback). I picked it up by chance at the airport and then discovered that it was inspired by the very view I was looking at: Spinalonga was a leper colony until 1953, and The Island is a generational saga with a leprosy theme. But a word of warning: it can be quite discomforting to consider the plight of the “unclean” people incarcerated on that island when you have never felt cleaner in your life.

In brief

USP Spas are everywhere these days, of course. But I was quite surprised to hear of a five-star resort (a member of the US-run Starwood collection of luxury hotels) popping up in Greece. I’ve spent quite a lot of time on Greek islands in the past few years, and this is the first time I’ve experienced anything so grand as a bathplug, so it was a shock to get not only a private pool but something called “ultimate guest service” — a team of enthusiastic and well-dressed young people who would gladly book my table for dinner or pop along with a power adapter.

AMBIENCE A trip to the Blue Palace is a bit like heaven. Just into its fourth season of business, this peaceful resort is set on a beautiful and otherwise undeveloped stretch of steep north Cretan coast, two miles from Elounda, and has a dramatic east-facing view towards the deserted island of Spinalonga, set perfectly in the embrace of a natural bay. Naturally, the spa building itself is all calming white curtains and terracotta pots, with sea-shells and pebbles in buckets. Extremely restful, save for one thing: the piped music. Yes, there had to be a drawback to this otherwise perfect place, and here it was: Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina played on an electronically simulated Peruvian nose-flute. But otherwise: what a great place to relax.

EXPERIENCE I relished all the wet-dry-wet-dry aspect of a day at the spa. It began to seem quite normal: into a jet bath of sea water laced with aromatic Cretan herbs, then under a freshwater shower; then a vigorous towelling; then wrapped in “striking frozen cucumber”, then the shower again; then drying off, then a dip in the pool. I opted for a three-day course of exfoliation, body wraps and facial masks called “The Elounda Glow”, described in the brochure as a “calming, luxurious and sensual experience”. Only afterwards did I read a comment by the spa’s manager that this was the programme most popular with visitors from the US — “because it doesn’t involve any exercise”.

IN CROWD International crowd seeking a breather.

FOOD The resort has five superb restaurants and a beautiful outdoor terrace bar.

WALLET WATCH A week’s B&B in a superior bungalow, including flights with British Airways and private transfers, costs from £785pp. Spa treatments start at £25. A six-day package of 24 treatments costs £570. The spa reopens in April.

NEED TO KNOW Lynne Truss travelled to the Blue Palace Resort & Spa with Essential Escapes (020-284 3344; www.essentialescapes.com).