‘The best hotel break we have ever had.’ William and Sonia Marshall’s Victorian villa received near universal praise from readers this year. They laud the ‘superb hosts’; ‘the warm, friendly’ welcome as they got out of their car, followed by tea and cake in the lounge, the ‘bedrooms uniquely decorated with all the essentials’. Those rooms mix contemporary, antique and traditional furniture with ‘restful’ pastels, florals and stripes; some overlook the garden and woodlands. Choose carefully: another reader found a twin room ‘very small’, if ‘beautifully presented’. At night, guests gather for canapés, before Mrs Marshall’s ‘impeccably presented’, ‘outstandingly good’ locally sourced dinner. ‘I’d never tasted lamb so succulent, and fillet steak so tender.’ ‘I believe everything but the bread was made on the premises.’ A Guide regular was less impressed, however. In 2018 he was served mushroom risotto with mashed potato and overcooked cauliflower and broccoli – ‘straight out of the 1970s. Fine dining it wasn’t.’ For a nightcap there are many single malts; at breakfast, ‘everything you could possibly want’. ‘We shall definitely be back.’ (Terri Phillips, Norma Curran, and others)