‘Without exception the house and its antique contents are fabulous; it’s an absolute gem,’ wrote a long-term Guide reader after visiting the National Trust hotel overlooking Snowdonia.

A romantic Jacobean mansion, first opened as a hotel in 1990 by the late Sir Bernard Ashley, remains home to his ‘fabulous collection of paintings, sculptures and antiques’.

‘Faultless, elegant and comfortable,’ writes a reader after a visit this year to William Griffiths’s ‘fine, family-run hotel’, forged from a 19th-century coaching inn.

‘The best of its kind.’ Standing in an ‘appealing’ village is Edward and Louise Sykes’s small, ‘equally professional and personable’ Georgian restaurant-with-rooms.

‘The physical ambience and sea coast views are wonderful,’ write trusted readers, of this spa hotel overlooking bay and village on the Pembrokeshire coast.

Behind mature trees in 26 acres of gardens and meadows overlooking the Preseli hills, this whitewashed 18th-century mansion offers a ‘bucolic setting with that “away from it all” feeling’, reports a reader after this year’s visit.

‘Wonderfully located’ above the River Usk, this Victorian former vicar’s house has a ‘timeless quality’.

Cocooned in ‘lovely, peaceful grounds in glorious countryside’, Jean-Pierre Mifsud’s ‘welcoming’ Victorian country house hotel continues to offer an enjoyable bucolic break.

Rich in antiques, fine wood panelling and painted ceilings. this sumptuous, well-refurbished country house hotel, in an historic Victorian manor house, lies on the edge of Snowdonia national park.

The leafy, flower-lined drive is a colourful welcome to Gary and Lindsay Ashcroft’s part-Georgian rectory on the Llyn peninsula.

‘An attractive building’ in a ‘tranquil setting’ with view of Carmarthen Bay, Melanie and Lucas Boissevain’s 19th-century neo-Gothic house is today as a smart, ‘happy, well-run’, hotel.

Surrounded by ‘handsome’ gardens bursting with rhododendrons, this ‘striking’ Italianate villa is a peaceful spot in an idyllic setting.

With extensive views over the Tywi estuary, David and Wendy Beaney’s Georgian restaurant-with-rooms has brought ‘stylish minimalism down to a fine art’.

In the middle of their Pembrokeshire working farm, the Evans family ‘warmly welcomes’ visitors to their laid-back, pleasingly rustic restaurant-with-rooms.

‘Delightful, hands-on’ Neil and Marco Soares-Baines have transformed the former home of the Armstrong-Jones family into a luxurious B&B, set between the mountains and the sea.

Glorious views to Snowdonia spill away from a cheerfully quirky restaurant-with-rooms surrounded by sheep-spotted fields on the Isle of Anglesey.

In parkland, woods and meadows below Offa’s Dyke, Bre and Graham Carrington-Sykes cater for all sorts.

In beautiful grounds near the Dyfi estuary, this chic restaurant-with-rooms occupies a 16th-century manor house once owned by Queen Victoria.

Clustered on the edge of a spectacular tidal estuary, this mansion house hotel – the focal point of Sir Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis's Italianate village – has welcomed guests including HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell.

Long a popular stopover, this well-located hotel has for centuries been the hub of a fashionable, cobbled market town surrounded by the cow-flecked fields of the Vale of Glamorgan.

The royal treatment awaits visitors to this stylishly refurbished Victorian town house hotel; a butler, a personal chef and a chauffeur-driven vintage Rolls-Royce are at the ready, if required.