‘The views are glorious,’ writes a Guide regular, after a visit to Toby Ashworth’s hotel above Carne Beach. ‘Each night I fell asleep to the sound of waves.’

It is not that they’ve put away childish things at this contemporary hotel set into the hillside above Mawgan Porth beach. It remains very family-friendly, but there is plenty for adults.

‘The place abounds with creative uses of old, mainly farm, paraphernalia.’ Guide inspectors enjoyed Nick Dent’s diverting Georgian farmhouse turned dog-friendly hotel with most rooms in converted outbuildings.

Shhh! It’s adults only at this ‘truly special’ cliff-top hotel, which, say readers this year, ‘achieves a wonderful balance of chic luxury, tranquillity and culinary delight’.

Just above the beach, Lana de Savary’s hotel was newly built when Edward VII came by rowing boat for a Devonshire cream tea.

Part of Luxury Family Hotels (see also Fowey Hall, Fowey, and Moonfleet Manor, Fleet), a small collection of historic properties, this family-focussed hotel occupies a ‘pretty, rambling’ Jacobean manor house in ‘lovely grounds’ with ‘views across the Wiltshire countryside’.

‘Yet again, everything was of the highest standard.’ Regular visitors once more praise Richard Seton’s spa hotel overlooking the River Dart (come by boat, by all means).

On the South West Coastal Path, this former Edwardian gentleman’s retreat has cliff-top views of the three-mile-long beach.

Historic grounds tumble away from this ‘magnificent, lovingly restored’ castellated mansion on the banks for the Tamar river.