Martinhal Beach Resort and Hotel, Portugal

The charm of the wild stretch of sand on the south-west tip of the Algarve that constitutes Martinhal Beach lies in its simplicity. There's lots of space for lounging around or running about on the wild stretch of sand, where the Atlantic is in a constant strop. When you tire of your holiday reading, you can stretch your legs with a walk across the headland to see the ruins of Henry the Navigator's fort, the Cape Canaveral of the 15th century. Or you could always just while away the time watching surfers ride the waves, or gulls and waders seek out the waters of the tidal pool. True relaxation. What more could you want?

Turn your back to the sea and consider a new vision of what visitors to Martinhal might desire. At the top of the beach, where there was once just the pines and maritime scrub of the Costa Vincentina Natural Park, stands a flash new hotel with a legion of holiday houses, the Martinhal Beach Resort & Hotel.

Sounds like eco-vandalism. But it isn't, at least to my mind. This plot of land had been scythed by a road and earmarked for development back in the 1980s – before people gave much of a thought to letting diggers mow down Mother Nature and get so close to the seashore. All sorts of monstrosities could have scarred this fragile landscape. Fortunately, the final plan was put in the hands of Roman and Chitra Stern, Nigel Chapman and Nicholas Dickinson.

Fans of hotel breaks might recognise those last two names as the original team behind Woolley Grange, the stylish, unstuffy, family-friendly retreat in Wiltshire that won a generation of affluent British parents over to the idea that hotels could genuinely welcome rather than tolerate kids. Chapman and Dickinson rolled out their now much-copied formula to three more properties before the collection, Luxury Family Hotels, was snapped up by Von Essen in 2006. That family-centred boutique approach also impressed the Sterns, who asked the hoteliers to create and run the hotel at Martinhal, to fulfil an essential part of the planning permission for the whole project.

But Chapman and Dickinson's influence hasn't been confined to the hotel. They also prompted a radical rethink of the resort's architecture, which led to the traditional Portuguese style of the 50 villas completed in the initial build being ditched in favour of an audacious modern interpretation of the landscape by London-based architects Conran & Partners.

Conran conceived a long, two-storey structure for the hotel and set it on the brow of the beach, placing 10 bedrooms with sea-facing terraces at ground level and a glass-fronted lounge and restaurant on the floor above. Twenty-eight more bedrooms and suites were set at one side, in a sequence of huge wood-clad boxes. And, directly below the hotel, the architects laid out a beach club, with a large pool, bar and restaurant.

The box concept was repeated for the design of the 132 resort houses, where the concrete was left bare. Conran made the most of the confines of the original plot by positioning some units to overlook the beach and others facing the bay and the pine woods of the surrounding nature reserve. At the centre of the site, a landlocked space was turned to the resort's advantage with the creation of a walled and gated complex focusing on a vast garden with a pool, designed to appeal to families with youngsters.

A large open-air "Village Square" serves as the the heart of the off-beach action, with an indoor/outdoor pool, shop, bistro, ice-cream parlour, gym, crèche and a club for older children, replete with Wii and foosball tables. Tennis courts and a spa with six treatment rooms, sauna and steam room are positioned in further-flung corners of the resort.

The resort has taken a holistic approach to its impact upon the local environment; both environmental and social considerations have been taken into account. All the buildings have excellent insulation and had been orientated to the sun, and use the rainfall from the roofs on the soil, thereby alleviating pressure on the local sewage works.  Moreover, indigenous plants that required minimal watering were selected – in the Algarve, one of the biggest environmental issues is the over-extraction of water. The resort has also renewed the electricity supply to the nearby town Sagres, and hired many of the 250 staff from the local area; 250 further indirect jobs have been created, practical acknowledgements of its role in the community.

The resort boasts a trio of restaurants. Lunch on the terrace at the chic As Dunas can slip languorously into cocktail hour. Line-caught fish, fleshy hoops of grilled squid, just-landed oysters and clams, and a peculiar delicacy called perceves, a goose-necked barnacle resembling dinosaur toes are served by the beach. O Terraco serves breakfast and gourmet fare, including the chef's sublime starter of sea urchin with scrambled egg served in a half-urchin shell (at €49/£40 the six-course tasting menu is excellent value for money), whilst Os Gambozinos in the Village Square is a more laid back pizzeria-cum-diner.

The resort boasts an excellent spa -The Finisterra, which provides a comprehensive range of treatments, and multifarious diversions including surfing, scuba diving, windsurfing, riding, jeep safaris, nature walks, gourmet picnics and (at preferential rates) golf.

The interiors of all the lodgings are as striking as the buildings, with furniture commissioned from Michael Sodeau, whose work features in London's Victoria & Albert Museum. His covetable designs rekindle artisan skills, using such materials as Portuguese wood and cork fashioned into deceptively simple softly angled shapes. The in-house interiors team, led by Chapman, has embellished the practical look with soft fabrics and fun touches such as sheepskin beanbags and giant basket-weave lamps, sourced with help from London design dealer Twentytwentyone. My timber-clad "beach room" had a decked, bay-facing balcony and the bathroom came with separate shower and oversized tub and cute cane-woven lamps made from Algarvian reeds.

The quality of finish could be no less for a hotel pronouncing itself "Europe's finest luxury family resort". More surprising are the prices, which start at £129 a night in the hotel and £1,100 a week for a house sleeping four – very competitive for the five-star market. But the biggest pull for me is still that wonderful beach.

Martinhal Beach Resort and Hotel, Apartado 54, Sagres, 8650-908, Portugal. (00351 282 620 026; www.martinhal.com)

We flew with award winning low fares airline Monarch, which offers flights to Faro from Birmingham, London Gatwick, London Luton (summer season only) and Manchester airports with fares, including taxes, starting from £46.50 one way (£83.99 return)

In addition to year-round low fares, Monarch also offers a unique range of tasty hot and cold meals onboard with prices from £3.00. Seats can be pre-booked at £7.50 per one-way flight to avoid the last minute free-for-all experienced on some other airlines, or for only £20, extra-legroom seats are available, which offer up to six inches of extra space.

Passengers travelling on scheduled flights can also avoid the queues at the airport and take advantage of online check-in which is available between 18 days and 4.5 hours prior to departure.For further information or to book, please visit www.monarch.co.uk.

Moscow's top hotels

It's a while since capitalism came to Russia, but the free market has been slow to work its wonders on Moscow's hotels. In the last few years, however, the choice of accommodation has expanded, with most of the major international chains building, or planning, properties. In the best hotels, standards, style and overall panache are world class, and unrecognisable compared with 10 years ago.

Baltschug Kempinski

Dating partly from 1898, the Hotel Baltschug belies its age, with an airy, light character, yet without any sense of having been brutalised by modernity. Located on the other side of the Moskva from Red Square, the hotel has the twin benefits of centrality and vantage; there is arguably no better view of St Basil’s and the Kremlin from anywhere in the city than that afforded by one of the hotel’s 40 luxury suites (some equipped with telescopes; ideal for those trying to keep an eye on state affairs).  There are 230 rooms, in three categories, but specify the view – choices are the Kremlin and Red Square, side streets or the hotel atrium, and a premium is paid accordingly. In addition to the view, guests may also select their preferred internal decor. A number of rooms have been decorated by Sir David Linley, the Swedish Company Living Design, and even HRH Princess Michael of Kent. The latter managed, with a few reams of excessively florid wallpaper and corresponding curtains, to feminise the Presidential suite to such an extent that the room is now known as the Princess Suite. Not for nothing is she dubbed ‘Princess Pushy’.

The panoramic views and fusion of European sensibility and Russian extravagance in the main Baltschug restaurant make meals memorable, but the Shogun restaurant, showcasing Asian cuisine (the latest fad among moneyed Muscovites), offers some spectacular sushi and sashimi, with thrice-weekly deliveries from Tsukiji Market. There is also Cafe Kranzler – a traditional Berlin-style coffee house with a wide and tempting selection of home-made confections. The hotel also boasts a bar with the world’s longest vodka menu, as well as a number of meeting rooms and often hosts exhibitions and fashion shows in the capacious Atrium.

The Health Club comprises a well-stocked gym, a satisfyingly long pool, sauna, solarium and a yoga class. The Baltschug Beauty Centre is small, but the therapists are exceptional. I had a Lomi-Lomi massage, an immensely profound Hawaiian treatment that involves the therapist employing forearms as well as hands, and massaging different parts of the body simultaneously.

Besides the Baltschug’s diverse domestic distractions, there is the cultural crucible of Moscow to explore, and the hotel has a number of guides who will, in consultation with guests, tailor-make a city tour.

 007 495 287 2000; www.kempinski.com/moscow.

Golden Apple Hotel

Despite the daft name, the 92-room Golden Apple is a welcome novelty in Moscow, and an alternative to the traditional grandeur of the central hotels and the Stalinist hangovers on the outskirts. The city's self-proclaimed "first boutique hotel" (2004), it's the sort of thing that could have gone horribly wrong, but if sleek contemporary is your thing, this is the place. There is an overwhelming sense of the Sanderson London here; the eponymous golden apple – a giant gilt cutaway sofa imbibes something of the Starckian Cocteau-like dream world into the hotel’s lobby. The hotel is well-located for the city's key shopping streets and half a mile north of Red Square. The spa was under reconstruction when I visited (it reopened at the beginning of September 2010), and if they’ve done as good a job as they have on the recently-refurbished restaurant, it will be outstanding.

The restaurant focuses on ‘molecular cuisine’ elements, but this does not, as I incorrectly assumed, mean puny portions – far from it. Rather, the focus is on aesthetics and flavour, and any single dish could contain over ten individual ingredients. I was stuffed after the starter (warm seafood salad with langoustines and pineapple dressing), but somehow made room for the steak (with countless accoutrements).

Arguably the hotel’s top feature (besides the achingly hip bar’s inbuilt chess board – perfect for sparking barman banter) is the in-room Nespresso machines, which really raises the tea and coffee making facilities bar to another level.

007 495 980 7000; www.goldenapple.ru

Ararat Park Hyatt

The oligarchs’ (and Paris Hilton’s) choice, the Ararat opened in 2002 on Neglinnaya Ulitsa, just a few minutes' walk from the Bolshoi Theatre, and within comfortable walking distance of Red Square and the Kremlin. The hotel owes not only its forename, but also its outward appearance to Armenia. The shape of the building represents ancient Armenian edifice: massive polyhedrons of fortresses and temples built into the surrounding landscape with forensic accuracy. Moreover, Cafe Ararat, the first floor restaurant, is a replica of the landmark establishment of the same name that existed from the 1940s until the 1970s inside the former Hotel Armenia.

The Park Restaurant on the hotel’s second floor is particularly renowned for its Sunday brunches – a mêlée of world cuisines washed down with unlimited champagne, but the ultimate dining experience here is to be found in the Conservatory Bar and Lounge on the 10^th floor of the hotel. The trendy zebrano wood-meets-chromium bar, with both internal and external seating, offers sweeping views over the Duma and the Bolshoi theatre. Indeed, the sensational view earned the Conservatory a place in the ‘Best Bars in the World’ list compiled by the Architectural Digest. It is somewhat ironic that Ararat, the city in Armenia from which the hotel’s name derives, is notorious for the impurity of its atmosphere, as on the day we visit, the toxic smog that has engulfed Moscow for a fortnight makes an unsolicited reappearance, scuppering our al fresco dining intentions. The views from inside are just as spectacular, but fortunately the food bucks the conventional negative view-quality correlation. All the dishes we tried – a gazpacho, tuna tartare and pelmeni (Russian ravioli) – demanded focus on the plate as opposed to the window.

The hotel contains 216 rooms, including 21 suites, which are in no sense generic, all featuring designs individual designs that project a cosmopolitan yet residential feel.  

Flights: We flew from London Heathrow to Moscow Domodedovo with British Midland International (bmi). bmi offers twice daily return economy flights from London Heathrow to Moscow from £218 (www.flybmi.com/bmi/en-gb/special-offers/flight-offers/worldwide-hotspots.aspx), or why not treat yourself to Business Class tickets: from £1394 including taxes, and enjoy the Great British Lounge at Terminal 1, Gate 5 featuring an Aga serving piping hot soup and porridge, The Local (a bar offering a sophisticated British pub environment), Lounge Dining, showers and work stations.

Luton Hoo, Bedfordshire

There aren’t many hotels whose in-room DVD menu is comprised solely of films shot on site. Luton Hoo, however, which has served as a backdrop for over a dozen classics, including Four Weddings and a Funeral and Eyes Wide Shut, can and does.

Set in a five-star oasis in 1,000 acres of parkland between Luton airport, the M1 and the River Lea and a mere 30 miles north of central London, this family pile-turned-hotel is heaving with history. The Mansion House was built in the 1760s. Enlarged and remodelled over the centuries, it was bought in 1903 by a diamond magnate, and played a bit part in many 20th-century goings-on: Edward VII and Wallis Simpson visited in 1936, the Queen and Prince Philip honeymooned there in 1947, and Winston Churchill picked it as a rally spot for 100,000 supporters in 1948. So capacious are its grounds that a fleet of London cabs ferries guests around.

The main house has 35 suites and bedrooms, of varying sizes and styles and decorated in keeping with the original. There are a further 109 rooms in the Parkland wing, the Old Stables (which houses the spa, gym and country club), and the conference complex, Warren Weir Suite, in one of which I was staying.

Check-in was swift and I was shown my room with commentary en route provided by Zena Dickinson, the hotel’s resident historian, who came to Luton Hoo to work for the Philips family in 1985.

The décor in my room was understated but luxurious – simple beige sofas, smaller curtain tassels and pleasantly mismatched antiques instead of dull samey hotel furniture. The effect was to give one the feeling of staying in a country house, rather than a hotel – a pleasant change.

For sybarites the spa offers a range of facials, massages and body treatments, some of which use an organic range of spa products inspired by the plants in the garden of Luton Hoo. These include products that have delicate natural aromas of geranium, bay leaf and witch hazel – some of which are Soil Association accredited. There's also two indoor swimming pools and fitness studios (one of each in the Warren Weir complex and the Country Club). For outdoor pursuits there’s tennis courts and the 18-hole golf course, or the hotel can organise fishing, clay pigeon shooting, archery, cross-bow or cycling.

If you’ve worked up a hunger, there’s plenty of options for sustenance, from the more formal Wernher Restaurant (gents must wear jackets) to Adam’s Brasserie, which is more relaxed and will appeal to golfers with its hearty meals and proximity to the 19th Bar.

Guests are an admixture of businessmen, golfers, couples on luxury breaks, and day-tripping pensioners attracted by the hotel's National Trust-style magnificence and the £24.50 afternoon teas.

Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf & Spa, The Mansion House, Luton, Bedfordshire, LU1 3TQ; tel. 01582 734437; www.lutonhoo.co.uk

 

Feversham Arms and Verbena Spa

Set just off the market square in impossibly cute Helmsley, on the edge of the North York Moors National Park, the Feversham Arms, a tastefully weathered inn, built in the local stone, has long been the village’s premier lodging.

The core clientele has always been those interested in country pursuits: shooting (there’s a secure gun room on site), walking and riding (there are stables a five-minute stroll away). It has an all-weather tennis court, a gym that belies the size of the hotel (not the usual broom cupboard with weights) and a heated outdoor pool.

There are just 33 rooms, including several spacious suites. All come with Bang & Olufsen televisions (and the option to pipe sound into the bathroom), plump duck-down pillows, and duvets ensconced in sumptuous Egyptian-cotton sheets. My boyfriend likened it to kipping on cumulus. Decor is muted and modish. Our suite was amply proportioned, comfortably appointed and easy on the eye. Our vast bathroom, replete with L’Occitane goodies (Verbena-scented, of course), was designed for languid lingering. I liked the incense sticks and ‘sheep dip’ lavender bubble bath – a nice nod to Yorkshire, as was the work by local artists that adorn almost every wall.

The inn’s conservatory-style restaurant has echoes of an Eighties wine bar (including a display of empty bottles). The food is rich and filling, with a comprehensive, albeit not cheap, wine list to accompany it. Good breakfasts, too — the poached haddock is particularly recommended. Another bonus: room service comes without those swingeing “delivery charges” most hotels like to add, as if they’ve had to send the meal by FedEx.

Opportunities to offset excessive indulgence at the dinner table are plentiful. Walk out of the door and you are straight on the Cleveland Way — a three-mile stroll takes you to the atmospheric ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, once the greatest Cistercian centre in England. Other nearby attractions include Mount Grace Priory, Nunnington Hall and Castle Howard, of Brideshead Revisited and Barry Lyndon fame. And there are plenty of other walks in the vicinity, including a romp among the “bridestones” of Dalby Forest — sandstone outcrops carved into curious shapes by nature.

Simon Rhatigan, the hotel’s owner (responsible in his last post for launching the Serenity Spa at Seaham Hall in Co Durham, which is regularly voted the best in Britain) has equalled his past pampering success with the Verbena Spa. Verbena may come as a surprise those for whom a spa connotes white-walled minimalism and bowls of green apples. This, after all, is Yorkshire where a spade has never knowingly been called a gardening implement, so the Spa eschews all thoughts of Asian artiness in favour of good, honest, back-to-your-roots classic English country decor. Like the public areas and bedrooms, the spa is all about unintimidating luxury.

I’ve never seen a relaxation room quite like Verbena’s. It is a vast jigsaw of sink-in sofas in cosy creams and mossy greens, top heavy with plump cushions and fronted by low tartan-covered tables that are scattered with a newsagent’s worth of glossy magazines. If you require more reading matter the book shelves, which also double as a room divider to keep the mood intimate, are weighed down with leather-bound tomes. Lots of silky rugs and tactile knick-knacks warm things up even more.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I could see the spa garden with a decked area dotted with teak tables and chairs and a large hot tub for when the sun hits this south-facing terrace. The garden has been designed by Matthew Wilson of the Royal Horticultural Society, with borders of lavender, santolina, salvia and geranium as well as its namesake, verbena.

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ThereTTHThere’s  an outdoor swimming pool and a heat experience that you can use prior to your appointment, as well as a saunarium, aromatherapy and salt vapour rooms, an ice cave and monsoon feature showers. I had a quick dip into each before snuggling into a chair where I was offered an iced tea to sip while flicking through a copy of OK!.

There’s also a small brasserie bar where you can order juices, smoothies, and even some spa-tisserie cakes. If only my eye hadn’t fallen to the cover of Heat magazine where the ample flesh of several bikini-clad celebrities was being held up for ridicule, I might have been tempted but, instead, I decided to save myself until dinner. Fortunately, Lisa, my therapist, soon appeared so that my resolve was no tested for too long. The treatment room looked more like a Smallbone kitchen than your standard Thai-inspired, sterile environment, with cupboards with round wooden knobs and Elgar playing in the background. It was a thoroughly British affair. My Elemis deep tissue massage (£75 for an hour), which began with a wonderfully invigorating body brush, was heavenly.

The visitor book in the hotel lobby spills over with praise: 'Lovely staff, fabulous room, amazing food' read one entry, 'Wonderful as ever' read another. I didn't pen anything during our stay but I'll gladly put fingerpads to keyboard here and say the Feversham Arms was exactly my cup of (Yorkshire) tea.

The Feversham Arms, Helmsley; 01439 770766, www.fevershamarmshotel.com.

Hotel Adlon Kempinski

The celebrated Hotel Adlon reopened in 1997, having been entirely rebuilt following its destruction in 1945 (despite having survived both World Wars, the hotel was a casualty of a blaze caused by a Soviet cigarette). It has what you would expect from a large, international five-star hotel in terms of comfort, facilities and quality of service. Although it doesn't quite recapture the panache of the place that attracted the great and the good (and the bad) of Berlin, from Kaiser Wilhelm II to Greta Garbo, it does rekindle much of the magic. There is little in the airy and voluptuous interiors to conjure up the ghosts of Marlene Dietrich and Charlie Chaplin – both pre-war habitués of the old Adlon, but there is not supposed to be. The hotel’s reconstruction provided an opportunity to replace the former, sombre interior with a brighter, airier aspect. Cupolas (redolent of the famed Foster dome at the Reichstag), and the clean, chic lines of the excellent spa reflects Berlin's reputation for exciting modern architecture.

Location is the hotel's true trump card, however: the Adlon, in the Mitte district of former East Berlin, is a stone's throw away from the Brandenburg Gate and the newly rebuilt Pariser Platz, a hub of the pre-war Berlin, part of the divided city's eerie no-man's land and now, once again, the city's premier "salon". Turn right out of the main entrance and you're in the iconic boulevard, Unter den Linden; left and through the gate, and you're at the Reichstag.

The Adlon still attracts visiting royalty (the Queen and the Prince of Wales have stayed), politicians on state visits (Sarkozy was present during our visit), and celebrities (Michael Jackson infamously dangled  ‘Blanket’, his son, from a third floor balcony of the hotel in 2002). Among mere mortals, there is a 50/50 split between business and leisure visitors (the latter more prevalent at weekends).

A good deal of thought has gone into making the well-proportioned bedrooms (some 385 in all) both practical as well as comfortable. Once tucked up for the night, I could control the sophisticated lighting and air-conditioning from discreet panels hidden inside the bedside cabinets. The one perplexing feature was the label on the bathroom unguents, which instructed me to call a helpline for assistance in selecting a suitable salt or soap. This seemed to me to be a wholly unbefitting bathtime request; faffing around with phones surely detracts from the relaxational focus of the experience? Whilst I bravely bathed unaided, for curiosity’s sake my companion decided to avail herself of the service. The final irony of the situation was that the person at the end of the requisite line had no idea what she was talking about, probably because she was the first person dutiful (or naïve) enough to ask.

The hotel boasts three Michelin-starred restaurants: the Lorenz Adlon offers a lighter take on classic French fare and plenty of Brandenburg Gate Champagne moments; the stylish MÃ Tim Raue and the Gabriele specialise respectively in modern Asian fusion and Italian. There is also the Quarré, which offers regional German cuisine. It is also the place for breakfast, which is exceptional in terms of both food (with four types of muesli and an impressive medley of jams – including kiwi) and aspect (overlooking the Brandenburg Gate), and best of all may be enjoyed al fresco.

Plurality is clearly a theme: the Adlon boasts not one, but two spas. The main recreation area comprises a decent-sized pool, fitness room, sauna and steam bath. The recently opened day spa is a more Zen-like chill-out zone offering an extensive range of beauty and massage treatments. I had a sleep-inducing Swedish massage (at a very respectable €45), and my therapist helpfully provided me with a (worryingly long) list of further treatments that I apparently need to increase my bodily, and decrease my financial wellbeing.

The most memorable features of the hotel are the buzz of the lobby, complete with its original elephantine-amphibian fountain (the gift of a maharaja) and its historic resonance. The concierge was also particularly charming, and deftly handled our manifold queries (from pepper spray suppliers to animal feeding times at the zoo).

Hotel Adlon Kempinski, Unter den Linden 77, 10117 Berlin (0049 302 2610; www.hotel-adlon.de)