The Little Gloster is closing at the end of September 2020. A Scandinavian breeze flows through this pretty corner of the Isle of Wight. Visitors in 2019 share Guide inspectors’ enthusiasm for the ‘lovely, fresh food’, ‘amenable service’, and sweeping Solent views from inside and out at this buzzing restaurant-with-rooms.

We have readers who have been returning for more than 20 years to the Wild family’s traditional hotel ‘in a picturesque village’ once known for oyster fishing.

A taste of life at sea is creating waves at this large, contemporary hotel jutting out over Ocean Village Marina.

A Georgian house ‘charmingly set into the ancient city wall’, this little Piggy is wee, wee, wee – at least, compared with its country cousins.

Between cathedral city and marina, set a little back from the main road, Lloyd van Rooyen and Gavin Wilson's smart, contemporary hotel centres on a farmhouse in a pastoral setting.

Nautical styling is spliced with New Forest hospitality at this ‘friendly’ riverside hotel, once the home of Henry Adams, master shipbuilder to Nelson.

Chic and rustic, this ‘simply lovely’ spot, in the foothills of the South Downs, is a countryside inn through and through.

Above the glistening ocean, Arielle and David Barratt’s cliff-top Arts and Crafts house lies in gated seclusion at the end of a cul-de-sac; a coastal path leads down to Sandown Bay and the beach.

Steeped with Scandinavian cool, Mariella and William Fleming’s renovated village pub-with-rooms is a stylishly relaxed spot near the Chichester canal towpath.

Priory Park, where W G Grace once wore whites, is a cricket ball throw from this Georgian hotel inside the city’s Roman walls.

‘Our sixth visit, and a wonderful end to our holiday,’ write readers who stopped over at this wisteria-smothered hotel in an unspoilt New Forest village.

Atop the cliffs of Sandown Bay, Mike and Carole Hailston’s ‘delightfully relaxing’ island hotel enjoys a ‘lovely’ setting: it stands within the perimeter of public gardens with steps leading down to the sands.

‘We enjoyed the waterside location,’ write trusted readers this year, drawn back for a third stay at Sam and Janet Bakose’s 350-year-old inn overlooking Pagham Harbour with its reserve of mudflats and salt marsh.

‘As we pulled up at Hillside, Gert shot out to meet us, greeted us warmly, gathered up our baggage and took us to our room.’

‘All aspects of the hotel hit the standard: staff service, decor, food quality, ambience.’ New endorsements for this Edwardian country house hotel under the South Downs.

You can take afternoon tea, as Queen Victoria did, at this ‘very good hotel’, perhaps on the Geranium Terrace, ‘the whole length adorned with superb pink geraniums’.

Bursting with character, a ‘top-rate pub-with-rooms’, in an 18th-century coaching inn (Fuller’s Hotels and Inns) near the cathedral.

There are treats in store for guests behind the chequerboard facade of this B&B, in a ‘pretty’ South Downs village close to Chichester.

A vine indeed grows up the Georgian frontage of Ashton Gray’s pub-with-rooms, behind which lies an older building – with a 14th-century tavern in the cellar.

Innovative hotelier Robin Hutson turned to pig husbandry in 2011, alchemising this New Forest hunting lodge into the mother of his still-growing family of Pig hotels (see index).

Built in 1865 as the Britannia Commercial Hotel, this ‘homely’ B&B sits in a quiet location close to the quay with its web of cobbled streets.

At the end of a long drive past rustic cabins, a helipad and a forest-fringed meadow, this 21st-century rebuild of a Georgian lodge is a ‘highly professional, near faultless’ modern country house hotel.

Visitors to Fina Jurado’s genteel B&B, in a medieval market town, are in for a surprise: a string of four 13th-century cottages has been knocked through to create a ‘wonderful’ open space.

On the edge of the New Forest, this comfortable Victorian villa in large grounds is a reviving spot.