‘A hotel with heart and soul’, this long-time favourite overlooking Cardigan Bay has been ‘well run’ by the Cave family and ‘unfailingly cheerful’ staff for more than a century.

‘After lunch overlooking the beach, we were smitten.’ Laid-back, minimalist and very cool, Andrew and Lindsey Evans’s chic clifftop hotel has ‘great views’ of Carmarthen Bay and the wide, sandy shore.

Behind the stone portico and long bay windows of this ‘atmospheric’ 19th-century seafront house, find a wealth of period detail and ornament – paintings, lamps, antique furniture, clocks, figurines.

‘Unfussy’, ‘warm’, ‘genuine’, Neil and Zoë Kedward's stylish country hotel stands in ‘flourishing’ gardens near the coast.

Delve into history at this gentlemanly Georgian house, set between the Snowdonia mountains and the Irish sea. Once the country home of the Armstrong-Jones family, it is today a sumptuous B&B run by ‘hands-on’ owners Neil and Marco Soares-Baines.

Guide readers this year continue to be ‘impressed’ by the balance of ‘informality and great efficiency’ at Paul Davies and Andrew Hetherington’s ‘lovely, quiet’ small hotel down peaceful country lanes.

History infuses the rooms – and sets the floors gently creaking – at the Lavin family’s atmospheric hotel and restaurant in the centre of this walled World Heritage town.