In the lea of the cliffs, overlooking a private beach on the rugged Galloway coast, Sian and David Ibbotson’s Victorian hunting lodge offers a great sense of escape.

‘As good as ever in all respects,’ writes a regular visitor after this year’s visit to Lawrence Hoskins’s popular hotel, a historic landmark of this Georgian town.

While it maintains its ‘eclectic, faultlessly tasteful’ Grand Tour theme, there are changes afoot at this small hotel in a ‘handsome red brick Georgian house’.

‘Exquisitely refurbished.’ Peter McKay and Douglas Blain have cultivated ‘an oasis of civilisation’ within a decadent cluster of Soho’s Georgian houses.

Infused with warmth, Paddy and Hannah Flynn’s Georgian mansion beneath the Slieve Bloom mountains may be a little lived in, but few hotels can touch it for character.

‘Wow, what a wonderful place this is!’ A regular reader lauded Andrew Pern’s restaurant-with-rooms on the edge of the North York Moors, which has a Michelin star and ambience on tap.

Now a ‘gracious’ B&B, this restored Victorian train station and princely Pullman carriages on disused tracks ooze the romance of travel’s golden age.

Regular Guide readers laud Jeff and Jill Sutheran’s B&B, forged from a ‘delightfully converted’ Presbyterian church, as ‘a perfect base for exploring this beautiful part of the north-east’.

Forged from the coastal villa of an aristocratic MP this ‘gloriously Gothic mini-Hogwarts, all gargoyles and turrets’ gazes out across the sea to Old Harry Rocks.