In a Knights Templar village with a backdrop of imposing Cross Fell mountain, a Georgian mansion and converted coach house are home to a personable small hotel.

Far from the hurrying world, this former coaching Iinn stands amid Wordsworth’s northern Lakes.

‘This continues to be a very dependable oasis,’ writes a trusted reader and regular visitor to this country house hotel (Relais & Châteaux), between the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Hadrian’s Wall World Heritage site.

For almost 120 years, the Baldry family have welcomed guests to their ancient farmhouse overlooking Lake Ullswater. ‘Wonderfully old-fashioned’ or ‘lost in time’, it’s a Marmite sort of hotel

Right at the water’s edge, Robert Lyons and Lesley Wheeler’s pub-with-rooms is ‘an amiable, comfortable place’ that draws regular returnees year after year.

Surrounded by gardens that sweep down to the River Leven, the Bardsley family’s ‘good-value’, child-friendly former 17th-century coaching house is a lively, welcoming spot.