‘We had breakfast in the restaurant overlooking the most attractive garden,’ write readers, well pleased with this hotel in a New Forest village on Beaulieu Water.

Built in 1652 as a manor house, this stone inn on the edge of the Peak District national park is owned by Lord and Lady Manners of nearby Haddon Hall

In springtime, the drive up to Jan and Adam Moore’s 18th-century former sporting lodge is ‘lined with young trees in blossom, bulbs everywhere’.

At the end of a ‘precipitous, twisty descent’, ‘courageous’ visitors are rewarded with ‘unrestricted views and a genuine, good-humoured welcome’ at Lana de Savary’s ‘fabulously secluded’ cliff-face hotel.

Built on the bailey of a hilltop castle, this dog-friendly hotel overlooks ‘a lovely town in stunning countryside’.

‘We did 14 miles over the moor today and are now pleasantly weary. It is a great place, very sad and wild,’ reads a letter – not from a Guide reader, but from Arthur Conan Doyle, said to have been inspired to write The Hound of the Baskervilles while staying at this 18th-century manor house.

‘Wow, what a wonderful place this is!’ A regular reader lauded Andrew Pern’s restaurant-with-rooms on the edge of the North York Moors, which has a Michelin star and ambience on tap.

A theatrical verve and ‘exceptionally nice staff’ at this Clerkenwell Georgian town house have visitors ‘raving about it’.