‘Wonderful as ever,’ writes a reader this year, a regular returnee to Elizabeth Perrée’s 16th-century, whitewashed stone farmhouse in a beautiful part of this car-free island. A horse-drawn carriage awaits guests arriving by ferry from Guernsey. The hotel is unabashedly old-fashioned – ‘the distilled essence of Sark’, as another reader put it. Bedrooms, in the main house and surrounding cottages, are pretty and traditional, simple but not skimped. Guests tend to gather for an aperitif – perhaps the house sloe gin – before dinner, a formal affair served in the restaurant or in the rose-filled garden. Chef Colin Day ‘continues to delight’ with his daily-changing menu strong on freshly landed fish and seafood and locally farmed and home-grown produce. For instance, scallops with garlic butter, Sark lobster Thermidor; beef fillet with wild mushrooms; for vegetarians maybe a herb risotto. Far from the distractions of modern life, you can swim in the natural Venus pool, scuba-dive, cycle, take fishing trips, spot oystercatchers and puffins, explore caves, visit gardens or, like our mathematician reader, brush up on Galois theory. (John Barnes, and others)