Four Seasons Resort Seychelles

Sixty-seven villas come down the hillside above Petite Anse on posts and timber decks, through the jungle, and stop at a beach of pale sand and granite boulders. The bay is a protected one on Mahé's south-west coast, and Four Seasons opened here in 2009, in villas AREA designed in the local Creole style: wood and stone under pitched roofs of metal or shingle. Every one has its own deck and infinity plunge pool, and an open-air pavilion for reading in, though with the bay below it a book has poor odds. In one bathroom a stone bath runs right up to a glass wall, with the plunge pool on the other side and the bay below that, which makes the bath the smallest of three pieces of water in view, and the only one with taps.

Recommended for couples who want a pool nobody else swims in, and for families who are steady on steps. The hill is steep, there is no lift, and electric cars do the climbing. The residences sleep up to nine, and the Kids For All Seasons programme, included for four- to twelve-year-olds and with surf lessons in it, runs from nine in the morning until nine at night, every day, which may be long enough to finish that book after all. On the beach, the watersports pavilion arranges diving and sailing. Dinner can be Japanese at Koi or Mediterranean seafood at Kannel. Le Syel, the spa, keeps its eight treatment rooms at the uppermost point of the resort, so after a massage the trip back down is somebody else's job.