Buried deep in the countryside, Sue Burdge’s inn is so much the model of an olde worlde Devon pub that it ‘could have been created by a set designer’.

Rock up to the Graves family’s village inn on the edge of Dartmoor for real ales and hearty pub food cooked with flair. Typical offerings: pan-roasted local lamb rump, fondant potato, celeriac purée; stone bass, sweet potato, king prawns, chorizo butter. Traditionally and cosily furnished bedrooms are thoughtfully equipped, down to the teapot on the hospitality tray.

You can eat a soup of locally caught crab in the nautical-themed restaurant at Rachel and Nigel Heath’s Victorian pub overlooking Start Bay, as waves crash on the shingle beach. New England-style bedrooms are fresh and appealing.

Cosy hotel or traditional pub? This 14th-century thatched inn offers the best of both, and will certainly 'tempt us from London again', says a recent visitor.

Possibly the oldest inn in England, with a medieval wooden window pre-dating glass, this thatched village pub in the Teign valley is ‘a gem’.

‘Nothing is too much trouble’ at this timber-framed pub-with-rooms, a few steps from Bayards Cove, where the Pilgrim Fathers departed for America.

Abutting the Roman city walls, this style-savvy red brick old coaching inn (Young’s Brewery) has a lively atmosphere.