‘Our first visit and not our last to this lovely welcoming hotel,’ writes a trusted reader, of John and Jane Bradley’s Edwardian hunting lodge, a beacon of excellence in Exmoor national park. The hosts are ‘genuinely caring’, writes another fan, ‘Jane front-of-house as wine expert, John as chef and keen gardener’. Traditionally styled bedrooms, two with four-poster, have moorland views, chilled spring water, fresh milk; luxury rooms have a cafetière, suites an espresso machine. In the Coleridge restaurant, with views towards the Coleridge Way, the guests are met, the feast is set with exemplary punctuality – ‘You may not have time for a pre-dinner drink if you arrive late!’ John Bradley’s seasonal menus, with nightly ‘tweaks’, are devised around local and home-grown ingredients. Praise this year for tempura prawns with coconut; herb-infused rump of Somerset lamb, smoked garlic, polenta; ‘an Exmoor blueberry syllabub I remember vividly three months later’. At breakfast there is ‘an excellent choice of cold and cooked items’. (Janet Allom, Mary Coles, and others)