Guests are assured of ‘friendliness and an outstanding welcome’ from second-generation owners Christopher and Andrea Varley at this ‘lovely hotel in quiet countryside’. Its loyal following, who consider it ‘a home away from home’, return regularly, drawn by the ‘pleasant atmosphere’. ‘It may be old-fashioned, but it’s none the worse for that.’ There are lounges upstairs and down (just right for afternoon tea), with prints, log fires, deep armchairs, a grandfather clock; ‘space to keep to oneself’ if desired. Bedrooms may need an update, but they have all the usual comforts. Beneath a moulded ceiling in the panelled dining room (added in 1842 for a visit by the Duke of Devonshire), chef Gordon Topp cooks an ‘excellent’ daily-changing menu of country house fare, perhaps including roast sirloin of beef, creamed potato; breast of Gressingham duck, caramelised apple, Calvados and thyme. Work up an appetite by climbing Hampsfell to the 19th-century travellers’ refuge built by Aynsome Manor resident John Remington, vicar of Cartmel, who was up there every day at 6 am, monarch of all he surveyed. (David Reed, and others)