Knockinaam Lodge

‘A stiff walk from Portpatrick along the cliffs’ brings you to Sian and David Ibbotson’s Victorian hunting lodge overlooking the Irish Sea. It is a ‘very comfortable, spacious house’, write readers, while the best bedrooms offer ‘Churchillian levels of luxury’. Indeed, you can book the room in which Churchill slept when he and Eisenhower planned the D-Day landings here. It has a sleigh bed and a century-old enamelled-concrete soaking bath. Rooms have a sea or garden view, perhaps a half-tester bed or a separate lounge. All have posh toiletries. The scones with afternoon tea by the fire are ‘dangerously tempting’, not to speak of 120-plus malt whiskies. Long-serving chef Tony Pierce changes his tasting menus each day, and you will want to be on form for his modern Scottish fare. Local and home-grown ingredients appear in such dishes as grilled, salted Ayrshire cod with mussels and greenhouse tomato emulsion, or roast canon of Galloway lamb with a rosemary-scented jus. The ‘polished service’ and all-round professionalism also win praise. In all, ‘I can’t recommend it highly enough,’ another reader declares. (Peter Foster, DL)