Put down your phone and head to one of these remote spots to really switch off.

In the (relatively recent) past, it was totally normal – expected, even – for the internet to be part and parcel of your holiday. If you didn’t gloat to the masses via a picture of your beachside caipirinha captioned “Ugh, Mondays”, did you even go anywhere? But now that emails and social media feeds have fully saturated our lives and a Wi-Fi connection has inevitably slithered its way onto long-haul flights (previously the last bastion of digital solace, bar Amish country and North Korea), there are few places where you can be truly free from that addictive and potentially damaging dopamine buzz you get from your phone.

Fortunately, there’s an answer. In an age where your mum posts motivational quotes on Instagram and even your grandparents are au fait with Amazon Echo, we’re becoming increasingly tuned in to the idea of tuning out, and a number of companies and hotels across the world are now offering retreats that promise a cleanse from all things screen-based. So, forgive us for making you spend more time looking at one, but see below for some of the best places to go for a digital detox. Read on, log off and go and find yourself – just don’t forget to write a lengthy and insufferable post about it on your return.

Time To Log Off has been running retreats, events and workshops at various places around Europe for the past few years, and cites “nomophobia” (the fear of being without your mobile phone) as one of the reasons people come along. Its latest offering is a technology-free weekend retreat in a secluded Somerset valley at a former dairy farm built in the 1800s. Phones, tablets and computers are taken from guests on arrival and given back on departure (there is an emergency landline). Cue nature hikes, yoga classes and plant-based meals, rounded off with relaxation time to show you the wholesome side of life without your phone.

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Las Vegas, despite being in the Mojave Desert, isn’t the first place that springs to mind when you’re thinking of going off-line, but that’s exactly why the Mandarin Oriental offers Digital Wellness escapes. In the high-end hotel’s spa, you can check yourself in to a Digital Silence Ceremony, where you hand in all your devices so you can relax with no electronic interruptions and enjoy spa treatments, including a massage with healing tourmaline crystals and sound therapy – perfect for when your Out Of Office has done nothing to stymie the barrage of emails from your boss.

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The Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa in Baden-Baden was offering guests wellness retreats long before iPhones were even invented (in 1872, to be precise). And with bellboys, Persian-style rugs and verdant views of the forest outside, the place has more than a touch of real-life Grand Budapest Hotel about it. If you want to go off-grid while you’re there, the rooms in the recently opened Villa Stéphanie have inner walls built with a copper grid that allows guests to switch off all wireless communication and electricity, simply by pressing a bedside button.

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If you want your digital detox to be a little more transformative than simply getting a break from social media, consider an Arctic cruise hosted by an Olympic medallist, Slovenian swimmer Ms Sara Isakovic, that promises to revamp your physical and mental wellbeing. Taking place in the Tromsø island region on the northwestern coast of Norway, you will sail in a catamaran and spend your days hiking, meditating and catching your own fish for dinner, leaving little time for digital indulgences.

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Sometimes, there’s nothing for it but to go to the end of the earth. At Bahía Bustamente, a private sheep farm tucked away in Argentine Patagonia, there are no digital detox workshops and no hand-in-your-phone-at-the-front-desk services. It’s so remote that Wi-Fi simply isn’t an option, and you’ll have to make do with the flora and fauna instead. Happily, this includes hundreds of species of birds, orcas and dolphins, a petrified forest and more than 50,000 penguins. You can, of course, still take pictures.

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