‘Arriving on a wet Sunday afternoon I was immediately made to feel welcome,’ writes a trusted reader who spent four happy nights at this old drovers’ inn in a Dales village. The inn, the first of the gastropubs. has recently been taken over by MIchael Wignall, the winner of two Michelin stars and his wife Johanna. They have plans to improve the inn’s nine bedrooms into luxury suites.The current bedrooms, in separate buildings, are highly individual. Meadow Studio, on the first floor of a converted barn, was ‘beautifully furnished’, with ‘so many additional touches’ – lamps lit, fresh milk in the minibar, a welcome note, a little box of truffles, ice cubes. Dinner is served in a beamed bar with log-burner, wooden chairs, benches, brassware, or more formally in the restaurant, ‘all starched napery, silver service’, but with ‘a cosy, happy atmosphere’. Our reader ‘pushed the boat out’ with an amuse-bouche of tandoori duck pompom with piccalilli, then crab and goat’s cheese tian, lobster thermidor, iced raspberry parfait with Chantilly cream: a ‘truly perfect meal’. Breakfast involved freshly squeezed orange juice, smoked haddock in a lemony sauce, scrambled eggs, ‘beautifully presented and absolutely delicious’. (Trevor Lockwood)