Cotton Bay Village, St Lucia

An impressive swimming pool with surrounding decked areas is often quiet, with a smaller pool attached for kids, making relaxing at Cotton Bay easy.

Regardless of where your villa is located, the beach is only minutes walk away. Here you can enjoy walks around the curved bay and experience the island's ruggedness, complete with mangrove trees, sea grass and horses galloping past you from the nearby riding school.

Depending on your viewpoint, this natural, rugged bay can provide delightful views of wildlife and nature flourishing at its best although some people I spoke with would have preferred the beach to have been 'maintained' on a regular basis.

Away from the beach-front section, both up and down the bay, has noticeable construction taking place. Cotton Bay Village has been developed in and around nature, keeping many impressive trees and plants, thus attracting some amazing wildlife. I do hope future developments also take this attitude when building.

In an increasingly busy and very populated world we live in, Cotton Bay provides a peaceful sanctuary for people wanting to spend quality time with each other, or solitude for the solo traveller without noise and interruptions.

My favourite part of the village was the Casuarina Spa, newly built and very chic; beautifully designed with a gorgeous selection of treatments on offer.

Being treated as an individual is paramount here. The spa manager greets all clients and personally shows them around the spa, from the dry and wet treatment rooms to the indoor saline pool, and the colour therapy steam room. Nearly all the treatments are done with Elemis products.

For couples who want to have some joint fun, away from the usual 'couples treatments', Casuarina is the only spa in St Lucia to feature the Moroccan Rasul. You can have fun in the Rasul steam room, as you apply various muds and clays to each other's bodies.

There are chairs for you to sit on if you wish. Not only is the skin cleansed by these fantastic clays, they certainly revive you too! The steam room is in semi-darkness with fibre optic stars and moons beamed around the room.

A computerised programme is run so there is no one else in the room with you. A tropical rain shower commences after a suitable period of time, with the ceiling allowing thousands of rain drops to descend on you of varying size and pressures, washing away all the mud and clay. Fun indeed!

This venture is new, and as such needs the odd tweak here and there to make it even more special. Concepts have been thought out, and in most cases they work well. I think Cotton Bay Village will perform to perfection given time.

For more information, visit www.cottonbayvillage.com