‘There is much to like and laugh about’ at this utterly transformed Grade I listed Elizabethan manor house, in a ‘glorious setting’ in the Otter valley.

A stroll from the town centre, Rick and Jill Stein’s restaurant-with-rooms – ‘a foodie destination’ – opened as a modest bistro in 1975.

‘A charming place in a charming situation’, Fiona and Paul Robinson’s ‘stylish, informal’ New England-inspired hotel soaks in the spread of Gerrans Bay.

‘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.

Olga Polizzi’s countryside retreat, at its origin a Regency fishing lodge created for the Duchess of Bedford, is today an ‘unpretentious, wholly enjoyable’ hotel ‘decorated with charm and taste’.

‘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.

‘We loved the atmosphere, the amazing food and the beautiful bedrooms.’

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.

‘Ideal for the young and the young at heart’, this riverside bar/restaurant-with-rooms near the medieval bridge is a popular spot in a ‘delightful little town’.

Guests in search of an ‘authentic, olde-worlde atmosphere’ find it in the flagstone passageways, huge fireplaces, wonky beams and creaky floorboards of this 15th-century coaching inn, in an ‘exquisitely preserved’ National Trust village.

With a champagne- and cake-filled pantry to plunder, plus boozy hot chocolate before bed, this glamorous operation turns traditional notions of a B&B on their head.

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.

A farmhouse retreat for foodies, this informal B&B, in a rural setting of meadows, woodland and oak-lined streams, mixes handsomely rustic bedrooms with convivial feasts rustled up in an open kitchen.

An inn since the 1720s, this characterful place rich in maritime history continues to welcome weary travellers to the old port and ship-building town.