A few weeks ago, I went to a Spanish cave retreat with a friend and her mother. I didn't know what to expect and I only knew that I was frazzled and needed some time out.

I had secret fears that it would resemble some austere ashram and that we'd have to sit in the lotus position on a spike for three days. And I didn't exactly feel reassured when we met the owner of the caves in a tapas bar, which was packed by what appeared to be farmhands.

The cave owner then took us up a dirt track and turned, to our horror, onto a dried-out river bed. This is not the stunning rural landscape I had imagined when I heard about these remote caves embedded in a montainous panorama in southern Spain.

The car chugged its way up the rough path across a vista of grotty poly-tunnels and muddy trails strewn with plastic bottles and bags. So this place was to offer me the refuge from miserable city life which I needed?

We stopped by an olive tree and were led inside the cave house. I was bracing myself for the worst but was pleasantly surprised when I peered inside. There were a number of cave rooms with beds, lamps and even doilies on the bedside tables.

But it was not the look of the place that relaxed me. It was the effect of the caves only hours after I had been in them.

Being an insomniac, being away from home means I either get no sleep in unfamiliar surroundings or I go armed with sleeping tablets. But after I had sat in the caves reading a book I began to get that "knocked out" feeling that you get after running a marathon or not sleeping for a week.

I slept well that night, better the next and even better the night after that. How weird, I thought. When I told the owners about it, they nodded sagaciously, telling me that the caves have a lot of positive energy and they can rebalance our depleted energy stores. I'm not certain I bought their version of things but, whatever it was, it had a pretty dramatic effect.

We spent our time there relaxing with a few massages and my friend even had a Reiki session in which she saw swirling colours when she had her eyes shut. The caves naturally heat and cool themselves and seemed to have an another-worldly quality which left you feeling sealed off from the usual bustle of life.

I was quite happy to sit there for God knows how long in front of the wood burner, staring at the wood lice.

When I came back home, everyone asked what I had done and it was only then I felt other people's awkwardness over doing nothing.

"What did you do," they asked. "Nothing," I said. "I just relaxed." They were confused. "But did you do anything else?"

"No. I sat in the cave and did nothing. It was brilliant!"