Soar Mill Cove Hotel

It’s all about the sublime seaside setting at Keith Makepeace’s family-centric, dog-friendly hotel with ‘amazing views to take your breath away’. A trail leads to ‘a beautiful, uncrowded beach with splendid rocks’, and there is easy access to the South West Coast Path. Simple but stylish bedrooms look out to sea or over rolling National Trust countryside, from floor-to-ceiling glass doors and a private patio. It is small wonder, then, that the low-slung hotel is ‘a favourite place’ for many returning guests. ‘I love everything about it,’ writes a reader who has been going for 30 years and finds it ‘like a second home’. Guide insiders with a house nearby drop in often. ‘On fine days we eat our bar lunch or cream tea on a sunny terrace. Service is always good, the food original and delicious, including lovely risotto with asparagus.’ In the light-filled, sea-facing dining room, Ian MacDonald’s menus are big on local fish and shellfish – lobster, crab, Exe mussels – and include a vegan option. ‘What more could you ask for?’ ‘Can’t wait to go again.’ (Gerald Taylor, Harriet Morris, Louisa Walker, and others)