These very special holiday destinations are designed to get you away from it all in luxurious style
Ed Grenby - 9 October 2022
Sometimes, like Greta Garbo, you simply “vant to be alone”. Coming soon to Channel 4 is a new series, called World’s Most Secret Hotels, that will feature a few places where you can do just that. But if the likes of jungle outposts and cabins hanging from cliffs are a bit too extreme for you, here are five very private pads in which anyone can disappear…
OVER THE OCEAN
Marooned out in the Indian Ocean, with each resort on its own tiny islet and no way to get to them but boat or seaplane – the tropical islands of the Maldives are already a Robinson Crusoe fantasy made real. You can spend your nights floating above warm, aquamarine wavelets in an overwater villa on stilts, and not even your nearest neighbour, some distance down the jetty, will be able to hear your contented sighs.
The resorts don’t all cost a pirate’s buried treasure to visit, either. While the Winslets and Windsors of this world can routinely drop £60,000 a night in the Maldives (that’s the top rate at the five-star Cheval Blanc Randheli, for instance, where the Prince and Princess of Wales have reportedly stayed), the rest of us can enjoy just the same icing-sugar sands, bath-warm waters and exquisite marine life at, say, the Westin Miriandhoo from £440 a night. Here, in fact, on the edge of the Baa Atoll Unesco Biosphere Reserve, the snorkelling is arguably the best in the Maldives. Visit in season to swim with (harmless!) whale sharks and manta rays. marriott.co.uk, then search for the Miriandhoo resort
AMONG THE TREETOPS
No one’s going to come knocking on your door when it’s 14 feet up in the air – which is where you’ll find the rooms at Loire Valley Lodges. There are “treehouse stays” available all over the place (including plenty in the UK; just have a look on Airbnb), but few are as beautiful as this thickly forested retreat in the countryside near Tours, in one of France’s prettiest, most château-studded regions. For £340 a night, you also get a gorgeous tree-shaded pool, spa, bike/ walking/art trails – and, when you really don’t want to be disturbed, there’s Le Lodge des Abeilles (Bees), a gorgeous little log cabin just big enough for two, where you simply watch the buzzy little honeymakers going about their business (or go about your own, of course). loirevalleylodges.com
UP A GLACIER
When the only way in or out of your hotel is by helicopter, you know you’re not going to get woken in the night by bar-crawling hen-do crowds outside your window. Sheldon Chalet is perched 6,000 feet up a nunatak (that’s a mountain ridge above a glacier, as any Inuitspeaker knows) – but not just any nunatak. You’ll find this one on the southern flank of Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America. Take in God’s-eye views over the Don Sheldon Amphitheater, a 35-square-mile natural bowl of pristine Alaskan granite-glacier-and-pure-whitesnow wilderness. There’s nothing rugged about the rooms, though: the ultra-luxurious accommodation comes with private chefs, personal guides, a fantastic menu of activities – and, of course, utter exclusivity – for your £2,000 a night per person (includes helicopters, activities, everything). sheldonchalet.com
UNDER THE GROUND
No need to draw the curtains against prying eyes when there are no windows! Humans have been drawn to the honeycomb hills and natural caves of Cappadocia, on Turkey’s Anatolian plains, since, well, caveman times. Back then, it was their defensive capabilities that appealed; now, it’s peace and privacy. There are several “cave hotels”, but Argos in Cappadocia (doubles from £220) stands out for its elegance, history and the fact that you can choose a windowed room or a fully underground one. The warrenlike resort encompasses a 1,500-year-old former cave monastery, a one-time Silk Road caravanserai and a labyrinth of tunnels that was used for refuge by persecuted early Christians. If you’ve gone windowless, be sure to get out of your room at dawn, though, to watch the sky fill with the hot air balloons that are Cappadocia’s other trademark. argosincappadocia.com
ON AN ISLAND
Wave goodbye to the masses – and, indeed, to modern life – because on a tiny islet sometimes sundered from the Devon mainland by the seas, sometimes hidden from it by the mists, the 1930s tinkle on like the century never turned. The whole outcrop here belongs to Burgh Island Hotel (doubles from £405 a night), where ladies sip sidecars, gentlemen wear black tie and the band plays charlestons. The decor has the effortless élan of a Louise Brooks bob, and the ambience is a Fitzgeraldian cocktail of elegant tipsiness and refusing to admit the existence of a less appealing world outside. That’s easy when the tide cuts you off from the mainland twice a day (only the hotel’s bizarre Heath-Robinson-style “sea tractor” can make the journey, and even that’s grounded in high seas). And what could be cosier than being forced to hunker down with your loved one until the storm passes? Nothing except, possibly, sitting it out in the island’s own Pilchard Inn (built in 1336, so plenty of darkly discreet inglenooks and crannies). burghisland.com
Sometimes, like Greta Garbo, you simply “vant to be alone”. Coming soon to Channel 4 is a new series, called World’s Most Secret Hotels, that will feature a few places where you can do just that. But if the likes of jungle outposts and cabins hanging from cliffs are a bit too extreme for you, here are five very private pads in which anyone can disappear…
OVER THE OCEAN
Marooned out in the Indian Ocean, with each resort on its own tiny islet and no way to get to them but boat or seaplane – the tropical islands of the Maldives are already a Robinson Crusoe fantasy made real. You can spend your nights floating above warm, aquamarine wavelets in an overwater villa on stilts, and not even your nearest neighbour, some distance down the jetty, will be able to hear your contented sighs.
The resorts don’t all cost a pirate’s buried treasure to visit, either. While the Winslets and Windsors of this world can routinely drop £60,000 a night in the Maldives (that’s the top rate at the five-star Cheval Blanc Randheli, for instance, where the Prince and Princess of Wales have reportedly stayed), the rest of us can enjoy just the same icing-sugar sands, bath-warm waters and exquisite marine life at, say, the Westin Miriandhoo from £440 a night. Here, in fact, on the edge of the Baa Atoll Unesco Biosphere Reserve, the snorkelling is arguably the best in the Maldives. Visit in season to swim with (harmless!) whale sharks and manta rays. marriott.co.uk, then search for the Miriandhoo resort
AMONG THE TREETOPS
No one’s going to come knocking on your door when it’s 14 feet up in the air – which is where you’ll find the rooms at Loire Valley Lodges. There are “treehouse stays” available all over the place (including plenty in the UK; just have a look on Airbnb), but few are as beautiful as this thickly forested retreat in the countryside near Tours, in one of France’s prettiest, most château-studded regions. For £340 a night, you also get a gorgeous tree-shaded pool, spa, bike/ walking/art trails – and, when you really don’t want to be disturbed, there’s Le Lodge des Abeilles (Bees), a gorgeous little log cabin just big enough for two, where you simply watch the buzzy little honeymakers going about their business (or go about your own, of course). loirevalleylodges.com
UP A GLACIER
When the only way in or out of your hotel is by helicopter, you know you’re not going to get woken in the night by bar-crawling hen-do crowds outside your window. Sheldon Chalet is perched 6,000 feet up a nunatak (that’s a mountain ridge above a glacier, as any Inuitspeaker knows) – but not just any nunatak. You’ll find this one on the southern flank of Alaska’s Denali, the highest peak in North America. Take in God’s-eye views over the Don Sheldon Amphitheater, a 35-square-mile natural bowl of pristine Alaskan granite-glacier-and-pure-whitesnow wilderness. There’s nothing rugged about the rooms, though: the ultra-luxurious accommodation comes with private chefs, personal guides, a fantastic menu of activities – and, of course, utter exclusivity – for your £2,000 a night per person (includes helicopters, activities, everything). sheldonchalet.com
UNDER THE GROUND
No need to draw the curtains against prying eyes when there are no windows! Humans have been drawn to the honeycomb hills and natural caves of Cappadocia, on Turkey’s Anatolian plains, since, well, caveman times. Back then, it was their defensive capabilities that appealed; now, it’s peace and privacy. There are several “cave hotels”, but Argos in Cappadocia (doubles from £220) stands out for its elegance, history and the fact that you can choose a windowed room or a fully underground one. The warrenlike resort encompasses a 1,500-year-old former cave monastery, a one-time Silk Road caravanserai and a labyrinth of tunnels that was used for refuge by persecuted early Christians. If you’ve gone windowless, be sure to get out of your room at dawn, though, to watch the sky fill with the hot air balloons that are Cappadocia’s other trademark. argosincappadocia.com
ON AN ISLAND
Wave goodbye to the masses – and, indeed, to modern life – because on a tiny islet sometimes sundered from the Devon mainland by the seas, sometimes hidden from it by the mists, the 1930s tinkle on like the century never turned. The whole outcrop here belongs to Burgh Island Hotel (doubles from £405 a night), where ladies sip sidecars, gentlemen wear black tie and the band plays charlestons. The decor has the effortless élan of a Louise Brooks bob, and the ambience is a Fitzgeraldian cocktail of elegant tipsiness and refusing to admit the existence of a less appealing world outside. That’s easy when the tide cuts you off from the mainland twice a day (only the hotel’s bizarre Heath-Robinson-style “sea tractor” can make the journey, and even that’s grounded in high seas). And what could be cosier than being forced to hunker down with your loved one until the storm passes? Nothing except, possibly, sitting it out in the island’s own Pilchard Inn (built in 1336, so plenty of darkly discreet inglenooks and crannies). burghisland.com