Best hotels for walking in Dorset

Featured hotels with Special Offers

The Priory - Gin Stay Package Special Offer

Wareham

Idyllically situated by a Saxon church with gardens bordered by the River Frome, this 16th-century priory has cast off its monk’s habit to become a characterful hotel.

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garden
fishing
wifi
romantic
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golf
mooring_available
wheelchair_accessible
walking
vegetarian_friendly
adultsonly
boutique
electric_charging_point
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parking
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foodie

The Eastbury Hotel & Spa - 2 Night Gourmet Lovers Stay Special Offer

Sherborne

Close to Sherborne Abbey, this handsome Georgian town house in ‘lovely’ walled gardens makes a ‘pleasant retreat’ in the heart of the historic market town.

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babyfriendly
child_friendly
disabled_facilities
dog_friendly
electric_charging_point
garden
golf
hot_tub_jacuzzi
indoor_pool
outdoor_dining
spa
veganfriendly
vegetarian_friendly
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wheelchair_accessible
wifi
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country_house
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restaurant_with_rooms
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More best hotels for walking in Dorset

The Ollerod, Beaminster

In Hardy’s ‘Emminster’, ten minutes from Dorset’s Jurassic Coast, a historic priest’s house is now a restaurant-led hotel.

Plumber Manor, Sturminster Newton

In the same family since it was built in the early 17th century, this manor house in Thomas Hardy’s ‘vale of little dairies’ has a timeless appeal – but change has been afoot.

Yalbury Cottage, Dorchester

Ariane and Jamie Jones preside over a much-admired hotel and restaurant in this 300-year-old thatched cottage once home to a local shepherd (Gabriel Oak, we like to think, for this is the very heart of Thomas Hardy country).

Castleman, Blandford Forum

In an idyllic village owned by the Bourke family and run in a spirit of benevolent feudalism, this former 18th-century dower house is a one-off hotel and restaurant.

Captain’s Club Hotel, Christchurch

Short of piping you aboard, they could scarcely be more welcoming at this luxurious, fun, dog-friendly hotel, with the sleek lines of a cruise ship, on the banks of the Stour.

The Acorn Inn, Evershot

You can sink a pint of Durdle Door in the oak-panelled bar in the village inn that furnished Thomas Hardy with his ‘Sow and Acorn’ in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, then stay the night in one of the bedrooms named on a Hardy theme.

The Pig on the Beach, Studland

Robin Hutson put the Pig in higgledy-piggledy with the most fanciful of his litter of porcine hotels (see index), set in a yellow seaside villa built in 1820 in romantic picturesque style, with gabled dormers, a turret and random roof line.

The Seaside Boarding House, Burton Bradstock

There’s more than an air of Cape Cod about this white clapboard hotel above Chesil Beach, which could have come straight out of an Edward Hopper painting.

Dorset House, Lyme Regis

‘A very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme,’ wrote Jane Austen, and only a very strange stranger would not see the charm in Lyn and Jason Martin’s Regency-style, eco-friendly B&B.

Summer Lodge, Evershot

When the Earl of Ilchester hired a certain Thomas Hardy to extend his Georgian dower house, he could not have foreseen the praise it would receive as an 'extremely well-run, very comfortable, welcoming hotel with first-class food' (Relais & Châteaux) and spa.

Moonfleet Manor, Fleet

‘An excellent place for a family reunion with young children’, this Georgian manor house above Chesil Beach, on Dorset’s Jurassic coast, has a seriously impressive list of facilities.

La Fleur de Lys, Shaftesbury

The hilltop town immortalised by Ridley Scott’s classic Hovis ad is home to this well-liked restaurant-with-rooms.

Hotels not in the Guide that you may want to consider

The Plantation

Poole

Updated in colonial style, a dog-friendly red-brick pub in a leafy residential area close to the village of Canford Cliffs and a beach. It has ornithological and botanical wallpaper and fabrics, dark wood shutters and screens; natural tones and materials in spacious bedrooms. Pub classics and sharing platters are served in the large conservatory (a riot of patterned floor tiles and exotic palms in up-cycled storage crates) or in one of the tropical Tiki huts in the garden.

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wifi
parking
dog_friendly
walking
pub_with_rooms
garden
seaside
child_friendly

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Featured hotels with Special Offers

Best hotels for walking in Dorset

The Priory - Gin Stay Package Special Offer

Wareham

The Eastbury Hotel & Spa - 2 Night Gourmet Lovers Stay Special Offer

Sherborne

More best hotels for walking in Dorset

Best hotels for walking in Dorset

Hotels not in the Guide that you may want to consider

Best hotels for walking in Dorset

The Plantation

Poole

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