Moonfleet Manor

It’s one long round of fun at this family-friendly hotel, centred on a Georgian manor house overlooking Chesil Beach and the Fleet Lagoon. Moonfleet is part of the Luxury Family Hotels group (see also Woolley Grange, Bradford-on-Avon, and Fowey Hall, next entry) which recently changed hands, but the formula remains the same, with a spa, an Ofsted crèche, swimming pool, cinema, trampoline, high teas and high jinks. A huge indoor play area houses everything from air hockey and table tennis to a traversing wall and indoor football pitch. It’s not smart or swanky: the real luxury for adults is the chance to relax while the children have a whale of a time. A reader praises the ‘warm, friendly, attentive staff’, and the comfy lounges, ‘particularly the one with huge squashy red sofas’, but adds that the ‘spacious and comfortable’ bedroom was ‘slightly drab, and smelt a little musty’. For dinner, the chef sources local produce for such dishes as pan-fried sea bass or Jurassic Coast rib-eye. Breakfast has ‘lots to choose from on the cereal/Danish pastry front, and really good fruit salad’. ‘I felt so at home that I forgot we were due to check out.’ (Diana Goodey, and others)