This ‘splendid old inn’, in a market town between the Lake District and the Yorkshire Dales, deftly mixes historic charm – beams, crackling fires and exposed stonework – with an updated, modern touch.

Overlooking the Levens estuary, watch the tide race in from Robert Lyons and Lesley Wheeler’s traditional pub-with-rooms – it’s a thrilling sight that harks centuries back to 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.

Cosy, 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’.