‘So nice to come back here,’ writes a trusted reader, on returning to the Allen family’s creeper-covered Victorian country house on a hillside above a peaceful valley. ‘Faultless in every respect,’ adds a Guide regular in 2018, after two ‘absolutely magical’ days. ‘This is how a hotel should be run.’ The owners promise ‘a home from home’, albeit one with oak-panelled hall, grand fireplace and portrait gallery. There is no designer chic, just solid tradition, comfort and a warm welcome with tea on arrival. If there is anything you want, ‘just ask at reception and it happens within minutes as though by magic’. Bedrooms, including a four-poster suite, are furnished with antiques and supplied with chocolates, fresh flowers, Arran Aromatics toiletries. Some overlook the gardens, fields grazed by Highland cattle and Marlee Loch. At dinner, Steve MacCallum’s ‘excellent’ daily-changing menus are big on local game, Scottish meat, wild salmon, home-grown fruit and vegetables, perhaps slow-cooked feather blade of beef, creamed leeks, wild mushrooms, fondant potato, roast root vegetables, red wine sauce. ‘Breakfast was good, too.’ (David Grant, Bill Wood, Ralph Wilson)