Mr & Mrs Smith

Against her better judgment, Mrs Smith hands over all trip-planning authority to me on this let’s-recharge-our-batteries-or-else-we-might-kill-each-other mini-holiday. Ah, the sweet give and take of love. It’s the Douro Valley or bust for us. To the Aquapura Hotel & Resort, and to the land where wine began, and where, thankfully, spa treatments never seem to end.

As tends to happen when I’m in charge, soon after we leave the main motorway we find ourselves laughably lost. Struggling with our late-night meanderings, Mrs Smith rings Aquapura’s reception. Almost immediately there’s a voice like milk and honey pouring out of the speakerphone, reassuringly delivering us from death-defying detour up a dark and dangerous corkscrew road.

We’re saved from the terraced hills, but not out of the water yet. Quickly finding ourselves lost again, this time it’s along the banks of the Douro River. Exasperated, Mrs Smith takes matters into her own hands and trots into a local riverside bar. She returns with a friendly faced local eager to help in broken French – our only common language. Mrs Smith shoves him gently my way. ‘Un pont; tournez à droite; continuer par cinq – ou non, six – non, non, peut être neuf kilometers; et voilà! Aquapura.’

‘Et voilà!’ I think. ‘Easy as that.’ Disappointed that I only got to try out two of my three newly acquired Portuguese phrases: bom dia [hello] and obrigado [thank you]; I file tosta mista [grilled cheese] for later. Relieved my grade-school French has served me well enough, soon we’re indeed voila-ing our hire car right off the main road from hilltop to our winding, cobblestone pathway to relaxation heaven.

After all the navigating it’s a pleasure to relinquish planning duties to the well-equipped and welcoming staff at Aquapura. The lobby of this 19th-century manor house is grand and glamorous, sultry and seductive – it’s the first tip-off our dark lair for the next few days will indeed be a retreat. We descend from the art gallery-like lobby into the belly of the building down a glass elevator (like the final scene of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory but in the opposite direction). Rather than exploding out into the open, it's as though we're actually retreating into middle earth, cocooned by a landscape nourished by centuries of wine cultivation. Dark, modern moody interiors lend an air of mystery, and after a nightcap of soporific port while admiring our bedside bath, we call it a day.

We wake up in a bedroom like a Bond Street boutique kitted out with smoky tobacco-hued glass, sleek chrome lamps and blindingly white bedding. Mrs Smith sits on the edge of our marshmallowy-soft duvet reading from the book of things to do in the area (12th-century castles, vineyards, boat trips, bike riding, horse-riding, sky diving…) while I do my best to dispel my Pavlovian instincts with relation to the hot-to-cold not cold-to-hot shower controls, I emerge scalded yet cold-water-blasted and armed with a brilliant idea. ‘Let’s do nothing.’

And so, after a leisurely wine-rich lunch on the terrace taking in the views of these Unesco-protected, show-stoppingly steep, stepped slopes we take a refreshing dip among grapevines and in a violet-hued outdoor swimming pool. We admire the slowness, grandness and ancient rootedness of it all before losing ourselves to an afternoon nap in the sunshine and then a spell in the spa.

Be warned, making your way through the abridged version of the Aquapura spa menu would be a daunting challenge for even the most bookish librarian. But with a little direction through the 'ytsara' treatments (holistic and Asian treatments using all-natural products) and 'mesosystem' offerings (weight-loss-focussed services) I optimistically opt-in for the 'ytsara animai' aka ‘the body reviver’. Mrs Smith goes for the stylishly seasonal 'mesosystem aquapura' olive treatment which uses freshly picked plump olives promising to repair damage done from sunny holidays past.

After a side-by-side foot ritual to ward off evil spirits (according to Mrs Smith mine need a lot more of that soaking) we are whisked off to our separate massage rooms. And so, like two peas in adjoining pods we both take in the stunning valley views pouring in from the panoramic windows while indulging in some serious pampering. In a post-treatment haze we lose the rest of the afternoon floating from sauna, to steam room, to electro-light-show shower, to waterbeds to lazy laps in the enormous indoor swimming pool complete with rain wall, fountains and another impressive view of that cool, inviting, inky blue Douro River.

The following morning, breakfast is a triumph. When we actually encounter the neverending spread of fresh fruit, pastries, local cheeses, chilled champagne and freshly squeezed orange juice it dawns on us that we have truly found paradise together. ‘So good?’ our waitress asks. ‘So-o-o-o good,’ we respond in unison as we soak in the sunshine on the stone courtyard dining patio surrounded by jasmine and climbing roses.

The woman on reception fondly bids us goodbye avoiding any trite ‘come back soon’ route, instead inviting us to return during the harvest season when all the locals sing together to make light the difficult task of rocky, hillside grape-picking. In an effort to make abandoning Aquapura just a little bit easier, in the car, Mrs Smith leads us in a soulful singalong of I Heard it Through the Grapevine as we head out onto the open road. Where we get lost. Again.