‘A superb hotel,’ reports a trusted reader in 2019, of Robin Hutson’s Elizabethan manor at the end of a mile-long drive.

Maureen Rowlatt is the ‘charming’ hostess at this B&B in a private valley, surrounded by gardens that extend into woodland and fields – an ideal spot for exploring Dartmoor and the Tamar valley.

‘An idyllic place. . . absolute heaven.’ So say regular visitors to Martyn Scarterfield and Petra Lampe’s dog-friendly B&B with ‘fabulous views’ over Bigbury Bay.

Built as a fishing lodge for Georgiana, Duchess of Bedford, and formerly home to the local fishing club, Olga Polizzi’s Regency cottage orné is surrounded by parkland landscaped by Humphry Repton, with the Tamar running through. Guests can fly fish for salmon and sea trout on eight miles of riverbank – tackle and ghillie provided.

There are ‘no airs and graces’ at this Georgian rectory-cum-hotel in the gentle South Hams countryside between Dartmoor and the South Devon coast.

With full-time instructors, a tackle shop in an old cock-fighting pit and 20 miles of river bank on the Tamar and six tributaries, the Fox-Edwards family’s hotel has been a fisherman’s friend for more than 50 years. Its own, crystal-clear Tinhay Lake is fishable all year.