Perfectly placed to explore the New Forest, this Victorian Arts and Crafts inn, on the Beaulieu river near Lord Montagu’s home, is a mix of cosy bolt-hole, luxury hotel and fine-dining restaurant, with a pub in a 1920s wing. Beyond the stone dogs that guard the door you find ‘great ambience’: beams, panelling and open fires. There is a wide choice of bedrooms, each different, with a mix of antique and contemporary styling. All have a king- or super-king-size bed and White Company toiletries; many have a four-poster. Duplex Hayloft suites, in a converted Georgian barn, have a private terrace overlooking the Gertrude Jekyll-inspired gardens. In the Terrace restaurant, Matthew Whitfield’s ambitious à la carte and tasting menus, including one for vegans, feature locally sourced and home-grown ingredients in such dishes as chalk-stream trout with pine nuts and Hampshire watercress. You can eat less expensively in Monty’s Inn, with imaginative fare such as garden herb sausage roll, potato and garden artichoke rösti, fish pie or a burger with 
Laverstoke mozzarella. The staff are ‘helpful 
and attentive’.