‘The setting, ambience and gardens are possibly the most attractive of any hotel we’ve stayed in, anywhere,’ writes a Guide reader this year of the Turner family’s country hotel, in a 16th-century priory on the River Frome.

‘High standards are upheld’ at Ariane and Jamie Jones’s ‘lovely’ restaurant-with-rooms deep in Thomas Hardy country, say returning guests in 2017.

‘The very friendly people are a key feature’ of this ‘excellent, expectation-exceeding’ restaurant-with-rooms, a short walk from the centre of historic Shaftesbury.

Mary-Lou Sturridge and Tony Mackintosh (late of London’s Groucho Club) have turned a once-derelict B&B into a ‘laid-back but sophisticated’ restaurant-with-rooms within sound of the waves.

In a pretty village five miles from Sherborne, chef/patron Sarah Lethbridge and her husband, Anthony, are the hands-on hosts at the country pub they restored nearly ten years ago.

Imaginative pub food and wood-fired summertime pizzas combine with upmarket country comforts at this quirkily renovated roadside inn.