Perfect peace reigns at this friendly hotel in at the end of a quarter-mile drive, in a densely wooded river valley at the western edge of Exmoor national park.

A consortium headed by Office Space in Town has just acquired hotel space in Devon. This gleaming white Art Deco hotel on a tidal island, sold by its former owners after 17 years, is undergoing a multi-million-pound make-over,

‘Old-fashioned in style and lovely for it.’ Returning guests this year were pleased to discover that Peter Wharton’s ‘splendid’ hotel overlooking Lyme Bay ‘sails gracefully on, without feeling the need to change things for the sake of change’.

‘As superb and lovely as ever,’ Martyn Scarterfield and Petra Lampe’s Edwardian holiday cottage turned guest house is ‘a home-away-from-home’ for many devoted returning visitors.

In an ‘absolutely beautiful position’ overlooking Start Bay, Rachel and Nigel Heath’s 19th-century village fisherman’s inn is ‘a relaxing place to stay’, writes a trusted reader this year.

For 120 years the Grose family have looked after this family-friendly’ hotel approached by lanes ‘resplendent with wild flowers’.

Gleeful design and a zesty touch fill ‘charming, personable hosts’ Andy and Julian Banner-Price’s ‘meticulously maintained’, award-winning Edwardian B&B near Torre Abbey.

Close to the beach, Phil Harnett and Vicki Osborne’s recently refurbished B&B makes a tranquil ‘home from home’.

In sub-tropical gardens with views over Lyme Bay, the D’Allen family’s hotel occupies a grand Georgian manor house, once home to John Callcott Horsley, designer of the first Christmas card.

‘Blissfully old-fashioned’, this large, traditional hotel is steps from the sheltered bay that has attracted visitors since Victorian times.

This lively hotel, in a sheltered cove, is surrounded by a wide terrace which faces the beachl

‘It was not only the view that made our stay, but the whole ambience,’ writers a Guide regular this year, of this Victorian hotel and spa on the Salcombe estuary.