This Tudor Gothic-style Elizabethan mansion, extended over centuries, overlooks parkland with a rare 17th-century parterre, walled rose garden, cascade, lily pond and follies.

Guide readers are unswervingly loyal to this family-friendly country house by the sea, with peerless views to Snowdonia across Cardigan Bay, run by the Fletcher-Brewer family since opening in 1948.

Overlooking St Bride's Bay, a 19th-century windmill tower forms the centrepiece and unlikely setting of this contemporary art hotel, where the 100-plus works on show may divide opinion, but the well-supplied and stylish bedrooms, friendly service and creative, modern dishes in the restaurant win unanimous approval.

New owners Annabel and Jamie Windsor-Medley have refreshed the simple but historic bedrooms at this unlikely pub, which occupies the original prior's quarters for a 12th-century Augustinian Priory, serving meals in the Cellar Bar, and making plans for dark-sky events and theatre in the grounds against the backdrop of evocative ruins and the Black Mountains.

There is nowhere in the world quite like Sir Clough Williams-Ellis's Italianate resort village, where hotel bedrooms are spread around various properties, centred on a Victorian mansion on wooded slopes above the sandy beaches of the Dwyryd estuary.