‘As excellent as ever.’ Regular guests were ‘delighted to report’ this year that this ‘wonderful’ 1840s dower house at the gateway to the Highlands ‘remains unchanged’.

The overnight sleeper from London arrives in the middle of nowhere in time for a breakfast of porridge with Drambuie at Scott Meikle and Stephanie Graham’s restaurant-with-rooms.

Built in the early 1800s, this handsome B&B, a former surgeon’s house, stands at the gateway to the Highlands.

‘It was all excellent,’ praise visitors in 2018 to ‘attentive but informal’ Alison and Fabrice Bouteloup’s red-stone former coaching inn-cum-restaurant-with-rooms.

Martin and Heather Walls’s white-painted Georgian guest house feels ‘blissfully remote’ – robins and red squirrels in the ‘peaceful’ surrounding woodland are your only neighbours – but it is within easy distance of bustling Pitlochry.

On a winding road, past woods, ferns and steel-grey lochs, John and Susan Martin’s ‘good-value, well-located’ small hotel is ‘a haven of tranquillity and good food’.

‘How refreshing to find a hotel that continues to strive to be the best, and succeed.’ Guide readers returned to Struan and Louise Lothian’s ‘small but pleasing hotel’ this year with friends, to find ‘the greeting friendly, the room lovely and warm’.

‘Beautiful, beautiful! silvery Tay, Thy scenery is enchanting on a fine summer day.'

Once the local doctor’s house, close to the town centre, this ‘well-appointed’ stone-built Victorian villa is now a modern guest house, enwrapped by ‘a pretty, surprisingly large garden’.

Having swapped the dark glitz of a Soho nightclub for the big sky splendour of loch and munro, Alice and Jade Calliva are the ‘friendly, welcoming’ and ‘highly motivated’ owners of this 18th-century former coaching inn.

In 1922 a young Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon (later Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, as we now think of her) joined a house party at this turreted Victorian country house on the River Tay.

‘Cherry and Gordon Gunn clearly know their stuff’, having run their ‘lovely place to stay’ for more than 30 years.

Tramp along the banks of nearby rivers Tummel and Tay, then back through woodland towards the McGown family’s friendly country hotel in a 17th-century turreted stone house just outside the town.

High praise from Guide regulars in 2018 for the ‘friendly service, imaginative food and lovely room’ at Valerie and Robert Kerr’s Victorian mansion on the outskirts of town.

A tranquil retreat within easy walking distance of the bustling centre, Finlay and Agnes Gillies's unfussy Victorian house stands amid mature gardens.