USP The Dead Sea in Berkshire. If there’s one thing I like, it’s a good massage. And if there’s another thing I like, it’s a float in saltwater. Imagine this: there’s a place where you can get both at the same time.

AMBIENCE Pleasantly relaxed. Elegant and lofty atria with huge windows. Nirvana is a modern take on the classical European source spa. Fed by its own well, it is devoted to all things watery. The complex looks like an out-of-town superstore on the outside, but is elegant and soothing inside, with soaring atria and huge windows to watch the freezing rain through.
It contains six — count ’em, six — pools, saunas, spa baths, an aromatherapy steam room, a restaurant and a variety of health and treatment rooms. There’s a 25m pure-water fitness pool, a pilastered “Roman” pool surrounded by loungers, a huge hydrotherapy pool whose jets, the strongest I’ve encountered, will loosen the tightest muscles. And, now, there are two flotation pools filled with Dead Sea salts.

EXPERIENCE Excellent. Therapists are communicative and accommodating. Best of all, there seemed to be no hard sell. Being in water so saline as to leave you weightless is pleasant but interesting to negotiate. Once you’ve learnt to move in slow motion and trust that the water will support you, though, it’s like being dropped on to a trampoline covered with a deep feather mattress topper. Hundreds of muscles think for a moment, get puzzled — and relax.

By the time we went through to the darkened environs of the zodiac-lined Celestial pool for a 40-minute float, I was already feeling dreamy. Ten minutes of drifting in a gentle current under a canopy of twinkling halogen stars and my mind was floating as well as my body. Muscles that have hurt for so long that I’d forgotten they did asked to be flexed, and the water held me in gentle hands as I complied. Strange, random thoughts flitted across my vision. I grinned like a village idiot.

Back in the Ocean pool, I had a massage. I’m generally a bit of a deep-tissue girl — anything softer is for wimps — but this, the gentlest massage I’ve ever had, shiatsu-based strokes and squeezings, combined with being very slowly pulled through syrupy water, was stunningly effective. It lasted ten minutes in all, but the effects were as strong as a powerful half hour. Afterwards, lying back, fingers linked behind my head, I felt like my masseur had come along and unzipped my back.

FOOD Delicious seasonal salads and mains.

IN CROWD Mainly female; lots of non- supermodel bodies and the odd smiley man.

WALLET WATCH A day pass costs from £99. Treatments range from £20 for a flotation massage to £90 for an 85-minute Clarins Fruit Salt Scrub and Body Detox Wrap.

NEED TO KNOW Nirvana Spa, Mole Road, Sindlesham, Wokingham, Berks (0118 9771777; www.nirvanaspa.co.uk)

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