A scenic approach leads to ‘imaginative, well-cooked food’ and ‘especially comfortable bedrooms’ at this ‘lovely, small’ restaurant-with-rooms’ in an area ripe with history and hiking routes. Named after the ‘black waters’ flowing along the garden’s edge, the ‘quiet’ and ‘spotless’ 16th-century manse by the River Nith is run by Jane McAndrew with ‘attentive’ staff. (‘It’s nice to be remembered,’ said a returning Guide reader in 2018.) Her husband, patron/chef Ian McAndrew, produces ‘top-of-the-scale’ daily-changing menus in the ‘charming dining room’. The recently refurbished bedrooms, each different (one has a baronial four-poster), come with home-made shortbread, Scottish tablet; an up-to-date bathroom, some with a hot-tub bath, most with a monsoon shower. More bathroom shelves would have been appreciated.