USP A good-value week of Swiss high life with lavish treatments earned after fun days of off-road scootering and Nordic walking.

AMBIENCE The spa is a cross between clinical and cosy, with soothing music. There is no tedious formality or dress code.

QUALITY OF EXPERIENCE The sign outside the mixed sauna area wasn’t so much a suggestion as an imperative to strip off (yikes! and even with blokes about). Thank heavens for the ladies-only area. I slid butt-naked into the aroma grotto, a scented Tardis-like chamber with a giant crystal in it, and tried to relax before my Alpienne Relax treatment.

Karin, my therapist, was a dream. Soothing, assured manner? Check. Firm, clever hands? Check. Experience? She has a decade’s worth. The treatment included a foot massage with arnica milk in a candle-lit boudoir, then a soak in a “Honey-Swiss stone pine bath”' (more stoic disrobing.) After pouring in aromatic honey and pine oils, Karin disappeared and I was left to loofah myself with the bits of orange shavings that bobbed about.

The stone pine is something of a miracle tree; prolonged whiffs of the bark are thought to slow down your heartbeat and boost circulation. Nicely woozy, I was primed for my back massage with the Oil of Life, aka marmot oil (from an Alpine rodent), a local cure for aching muscles, rheumatism and skin complaints. Seems that the Alps are overrun with the critters.

Every autumn a number are culled and the oil is extracted and bottled. Whatever qualms I had (none, actually) melted away under Karin’s expert ministrations. This was a proper, medicinal pummelling and bliss to my knotty shoulders and stiff spine. Classy product lines, fitness classes are free to guests and there’s a medical centre, with a team of doctors. Beyond the hotel, you can participate in adventure sports, golf or hiking.

FOOD Ostrich steak, lavender crème brûlée in Les Saisons, one of the hotel’s three restaurants.

IN CROWD Affluent Europeans who view pampering as a necessity, off-duty tycoons, discreet glamour-pusses and athletes such as the tennis champion Roger Federer. Liz Hurley has visited the spa.

WALLET WATCH Treatments start at about £30 for a 25-minute Breuss back massage to £130 for the 110-minute Vitality of the Glaciers facial. BA Holidays currently offers three nights in St Moritz from £397 a person, including return flights from Gatwick or Heathrow to Zurich, plus three nights at the Kempinski, half-board. Spa treatments and activities are extra. For more details visit www.ba.com.

A second-class return train ticket from Zurich airport to St Moritz costs about £62. To book, www.swisstravelsystem.ch. Alternatively, the Kempinski Grand Hotel Les Bains offers a four-night wellness package, available until October 18, for £565 per person. It includes half-board and three days of spa treatments.

NEED TO KNOW The St Moritz Spa, Kempinski Grand Hotel des Bains, St Moritz, Switzerland (00-41-81 8383838; www.kempinski-stmoritz.ch)

For more than 210 independent spa reviews log on to timesonline.co.uk/goodspaguide

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