The White Horse

Amid a luminous, big-sky landscape of tidal salt marshes, with views to the sea and Scolt Head Island, the Nye family’s hotel enjoys a ‘brilliant location on the coast’. Floor-to-ceiling windows let you better appreciate the views from the public rooms and from some of the bedrooms, decorated in seascape shades of teal and turquoise, lavender and sand. Eight garden rooms, in an annexe with a grass and sedum roof, are very dog-friendly, with a private terrace and a wooden entrance floor area for muddy boots and mucky pups coming in from the coast path. ‘The staff are helpful and kind,’ wrote a reader on a return visit this year, and ‘the food was still excellent’. A new marsh-side eating area with seafood bar has a clear marquee, sympathetic landscaping and furnishings. You can chow down with your pooch in the bar or eat in the restaurant, where Fran Hartshorne’s ‘heavily fishy’ menus also include dishes such as marsh-grazed, dry-aged beef sirloin, rose harissa and feta arancini. ‘The scallops were particularly memorable.’ At breakfast there is fish from the smokehouse at the bottom of the garden. (Sara Price, and others)