This long-established country house hotel with a walled garden, set in a peaceful Cumbrian village, has had an elegant refurbishment without compromising ‘its sense of history and tradition’.

Guests were ’intrigued by the old-style hospitality’ of this Ullswater institution, a creeper-covered lakeside farmhouse that maintains the traditions of a bygone age.

Watch the tide race in from Robert Lyons and Lesley Wheeler’s traditional pub-with-rooms overlooking the Levens estuary – it’s a thrilling sight that harks centuries back to the days when the inn was a stopover for coaches and horses before they crossed the sands to Lancaster.

A ‘convivial’ country pub with cosy rooms and ‘very good’ food, the Lowther family’s restored 18th-century coaching inn near Ullswater retains its rural roots.

Low-ceilinged and wood fire-warmed, this smartly refurbished 17th-century pub in the centre of a Lake District village is ‘friendly, fun and very convivial’.

In the oft-overlooked Eden valley, between the Lake District and North Pennines, this handsome country guest house offers ‘high standards, a relaxed atmosphere’ and fell views.