‘We will stay there again soon – if I can afford it,’ wrote a reader after a first visit to this country house hotel (Relais & Châteaux) last year. Things must be going well – he’s been back, to find everything ‘pretty faultless’.

There is much to fire the young imagination at this 17th-century manor house above Chesil beach, the setting for John Meade Falkner’s 1898 tale of smuggling, Moonfleet.

‘A great stay, great staff, accommodation, food, and all in a lovely river setting.’ A resounding endorsement from a reader this year for Robert Wilson and Tim Lloyd’s hotel on the banks of the Stour.