‘Tucked away at the end of the main street of this idyllic town, seconds from the water’s edge’, Charles Deuchar’s pub-with-rooms is a medieval merchant’s house in a 17th-century shell. It looks as Tudor as you please, with its ‘chocolate-box-perfect entrance’. ‘You check in at the bar,’ explains a Guide insider this year. ‘We could not have been greeted more warmly, and felt instantly at home.’ A winding staircase (mind your head on the beams) led to a ‘charmingly decorated’ bedroom with ‘uneven walls and floor, extremely comfy bed, sofa, coffee table, home-made shortbread’. For families, there are suites and a triple room. Views are, variously, of the River Dart, the cove and Dartmouth Castle. By day, bar food (a ploughman’s, toasties, mussels), cakes and coffees are served in the ‘lovely atmosphere of the pub’. At dinner, ‘we both had fresh local crab, then a superfood salad and a seafood risotto. I liked the menu’s local credentials and the option for lighter meals.’ Breakfast, served obligingly early, brought ‘excellent smoked salmon and scrambled eggs’. Overall, ‘I was enchanted.’