ROSIE GREEN SPA STRUCK

It’s taken 20 years, but our globetrotting wellness seeker has finally worked out how to get the massage that she really wants

Spa treatments quite often require you to be naked, save for paper pants, with your eyes closed, in a low-lit room with a total stranger. Basically all kinds of vulnerable. Which means even if you’re ordinarily the kind of person that is happy asking for your coffee extra hot, or calls reception because their pillow is softer than Kim Jong-un’s waistline, you’re likely to be more inhibited than usual.

And there is something about maintaining the status quo of loveliness in a treatment room that makes you, on the couch, feel you don’t want to ask: “Can you dial up the massage a bit?” You don’t want to say, “That whale music is making me feel deranged.” Or, “That hot stone is giving me third degree burns on my coccyx.”

So that’s how it was I found myself on a massage bed at the Annabelle in Cyprus, attempting to ignore the fact that I was cold. The therapist had even asked me, how the temperature was, and I had said, “fine, great”. As always, despite discomfort, I didn’t want to dampen the mood. (Perhaps it’s a female thing: the male deputy editor of this section tells me he was once in a situation where a rather burly male masseur started digging his thumbs very forcefully into the soles of his feet “and I made it very clear that that was going to stop right then.”)

Hmm. But returning to my recent massage bed experience, apart from the goosebumps, in all other respects my situation was pretty perfect.

I was here in my capacity as spa sleuth, reviewing the recently overhauled hotel and new rooftop spa area.

The Annabelle is known as the country’s grande dame of hotels, the most expensive and luxurious Paphos has to offer. As a teenager in the Nineties I stayed somewhere less salubrious, further out of town, and on our daily troop to the central taverns for exotic sounding sheftalia (Cypriot sausages), I lusted after a chance to visit the Annabelle’s swim-up bar (still in existence) and to be part of the blinged-up bikini brigade that sat round the clear turquoise pools.

Fast forward to 2018 and it’s still the most luxe on the sea front strip, the €10 million

(£8.9 million) refurb resulting in a grand, spacious lobby and upgraded rooms. Think blue and white striped fabrics, modern Mediterranean design and wooden shutters and decking.

But the rooftop spa area is where the spend is most obvious. A glorious light airy space perched high in the clouds. Through the enormous windows you can see only sky and sea (with fellow tourists well out of eye line). I went en famille in peak holiday season and it was a great, relaxing escape. The rooms felt airy and spacious and the food was local, fresh and not too expensive.

But back to the rooftop spa space, which houses a pool and lounging area. It only opened in May and everything was shiny new. There aren’t many treatment rooms and the gym is pretty small (not enough equipment according to my husband) so the Annabelle can’t claim to be a wellness/spa destination, but instead a hotel that offers high-level pampering to those who want it.

The treatments are good, using the heavenly aromatherapeutic ila, the marine range Osea, plus anti-ageing QMS.

The therapists I had were good, too. Not mind-blowing, but good. And they didn’t try to sell me products as I drowsily got off the bed (massive tick).

But, to return to the main point – this time, feeling ever so slightly cold on the massage bed, I had an epiphany. At the age of 44, instead of spending the whole massage pushing down thoughts, I said, politely obviously, please could I have the temperature a little higher and the pressure a little firmer? And please could you not bother

This time, feeling ever so slightly cold on the massage bed, I had an epiphany

massaging my toes, but focus for longer on my back and neck? And my therapist was only too happy to oblige. There were no questions; no sudden froideur. A revelation.

So if you’re looking for a wellness boosting trip for October half term, the Annabelle is great. You’ll find warm seas, nourishing food, restorative sun, and maybe, just maybe, some inner strength…

Luxury tour operator Destinology (01204 474801; destinology.co.uk) offers seven nights at Annabelle from £499pp based on two sharing on a half board basis and including return easyJet flights from London Gatwick.

A little more pressure, please...