A Welsh rarebit on the tip of Cardigan Bay, this ‘lovely, wacky’ hotel is a family-friendly, family-run affair.

‘In a small village in a valley, surrounded by forest walks’, Annabel and Stephen Thomas’s 16th-century country house is ‘ideal for guests wishing to holiday with their four-legged friend’.

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

Friendly and welcoming as ever, this B&B is run by second-generation owners Michael and Judith Cooper, and their son, Oliver.

In a sylvan setting on the remote Lleyn peninsula, Gunna and Chris Chown’s Georgian country house has enchanted guests for over 30 years.

Embedded firmly in the Wye valley, Chris and Kirsty Harrod’s Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms again delighted readers’ taste buds in 2018.

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’.

On ‘one of the steepest, narrowest streets’ in a ‘town of sudden vistas’, just above the castle, this restaurant-with-rooms has been run by chef/patron Glyn Roberts and his wife, Jacqueline, since 1989.

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

‘Our puppy absolutely loved the place!’ writes a reader, of this dining pub in a hamlet between the Brecon Beacons and the Black mountains.

‘A great base for exploring,’ Richard Ireton and Sarah Hudson’s ‘pleasing, white-painted coaching inn’ stands overlooking an old stone bridge across the River Monmow, while ‘behind it, green hills gently rise’.

‘On a sunny evening the effect of the clarity of the light, the pastel-coloured houses and the harbour is reminiscent of Brittany.’

Ecclesiastical historians rejoice! In the ‘romantic’ setting of a vertiginous valley beneath the Black mountains, this ‘atmospheric’ small hotel partly occupies an ivy-clad medieval tower. It is one of four Grade 1 listed buildings in the ruined priory’s precincts.

Expect a thoroughly ‘warm’ ‘croeso’ at Eluned Rowlands’s B&B on the edge of Snowdonia. Welsh is the lingua franca of this converted cowshed, which is imbued with local culture and heritage.

On the ‘upmarket Victorian promenade’ of a university town, Huw and Beth Roberts’s hotel is ‘brightly presented’, with ‘tables and chairs on a small lawn facing the sea’.

Blond sofas, fluted pillars, chandeliers, paintings, oriental rugs, gilded mirrors… Opulence abounds in this bay-fronted Victorian former gentleman’s residence on the prom.

‘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.

There are ‘stunning’ views of Bala Lake and Arenig mountain from the bedrooms of this Victorian house on a hillside in Snowdonia national park.

‘Intimate and eccentric’, this one-time cottage hospital on a ‘testing’ country lane has been converted into a ‘stylish’ rural guest house at the foot of Cadair Idris.

With Tal-y-llyn lake practically in the back garden, Cadair Idris behind, and ‘some of the finest walks in any national park’, Alex Yorke and Lorraine Hinkins’s Snowdonia B&B wins praise again this year.

‘Ten gold stars’ glitter among a constellation of guests’ praise for the ‘wonderful’ B&B with its ‘aura of tranquillity’ and views over the Preseli hills.

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

‘Our third visit.’ Readers tempted back this year to celebrity chef Stephen Terry’s restaurant-with-rooms – a reinvention of a ‘grotty roadside pub’ – found everything to their liking.

‘Welcoming hosts’ David and Beverley Harrison-Wood collect praise for their ‘very friendly, well-presented guest house’.