There is much to like at Harry Cragoe’s roadside restaurant-with-rooms, which takes its inspiration from California beach motels, and adds a dash of Scandinavia. Bedrooms are contemporary, with coastal-inspired colours, rather minimal storage space. Some have French doors opening on to the garden, some a fenced private deck, but all offer fresh milk, an eclectic choice of books and a Bakelite telephone. A grumble this year about a bathroom (no window or extractor fan; heated towel rail didn’t work). There have been big changes, though, with the addition of a new summer house dining room. There is a sitting room with open fire, a reading room, a copper-topped bar. Seasonal menus showcase local ingredients: maybe lamb from the Romney salt marshes, confit potatoes, broccoli; South Coast brill, Jerusalem artichoke, crispy chicken. Breakfast brings home-baked banana walnut bread, home-made jams, continental hams, kedgeree, Gallivant sausages and home-cured bacon – bloody Mary from the ‘recovery station’. Climb the towering dunes opposite to overlook ‘seemingly endless sandy beaches in one direction – the shocking pink and bright blue of Pontins Holiday Park in the other’. (R and BS)