Get a second opinion: read the review of The New White Lion from The Times

The hotel: What’s going on? I know, it just doesn’t make sense. A designer hotel opening in deepest, greenest Wales — aka Llandovery, an old drovers’ town at the bottom of a Carmarthenshire valley that used to have 58 pubs and, since everyone’s stopped droving and moved to London, now has just 12. It’s a town where shop names are puns, where there’s still a butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker, where it would be a funny old place to open a trendy hotel.

As a result, the hotel, which opened in January, has a bit of a split personality. The retirement-aged owners, Gerald and Sylvia Pritchard, are so friendly, you expect them to be running a little B&B, perhaps with doilies, net curtains and slap-up fry-ups. Perhaps that’s what they might have been doing if their super-successful, London-based, design-agency daughter hadn’t got involved.

So, you have quite twee folkloric themes to each bedroom, but they’re represented by Farrow & Ball colour schemes, Italian design pieces and lots of plush fabrics. The honesty bar in the gorgeous fireplaced living room looks very stylish — the sort of thing you’d mix a martini from before you popped out for dinner at J Sheekey — but Gerald’s sneaked some real ale in, perhaps when his daughter wasn’t looking.

Is this mix of homely parents and designer daughter an intergenerational disaster? Not remotely. It means it is, uniquely, a designer hotel that feels like home. Or, at least, like home would feel if home were all trendy and your one-year-old son hadn’t left marmalade marks up the stairs ... again.

Which bed’s mine? The two best rooms — the Physicians of Myddfai, with a nice corner bath, and the heaven-like Lady of the Lake — are at the front of the former pub. If you want guaranteed peace and quiet (Llandovery isn’t Blackpool, but chucking-out time at the weekend can be noisy), aim for one of the other, smaller upstairs rooms (my favourite was Twm Sion Catti, named after the Welsh Robin Hood, in case you didn’t know) or the large downstairs suite at the back.

Seems a shame not to have a slap-up fry-up? Well, it’s much, much better than that. The food put out by the Pritchards suggests it’s not just their daughter who’s trendy. Breakfast is all organic eggs, bacon, sausages and homemade laver bread, presented like you’re in a gastropub. And dinner is worthy of any sophisticated urban eatery, but again with proper homely touches. Sylvia likes to use seasonal ingredients, so I had a delicious watercress soup and cawl, a spring-lamb hotpot, rounded off with homemade apple pie and a plate of Welsh cheese. (They’re very good at cheese, the Welsh.) It costs just £21 for the four courses.

And, if you’re staying long enough to get bored of the food at the New White Lion (you won’t be), Llandovery’s only Chinese takeaway is surprisingly superb.

Time for some fresh air? It doesn’t take long to get out of town and into the green, green, green hills around the Towy Valley. The circular walk, partly boarded, around the RSPB Nature Reserve at Dinas takes about an hour and a half, and is life-affirmingly beautiful. It has it all — alder woodland, raging rapids, rugged bits, steep bits, views and a fair-to-middling chance of spotting a red kite. It’s just long enough to work off the laver bread in time for lunch at the very-friendly-even-if-you’re-English Neuadd Fawr Arms, in Cilycwm.

The next day, if you’re nosy, go and have a snoop at Prince Charles’s new abode, a couple of miles along a scenic track south of Llandovery. It’s not the little one right by the track, it’s the big one two hills away, the one with the good spot for parking one’s helicopter (and enough to make you wish you’d been born a Windsor).

The New White Lion (01550 720685, www.newwhitelion.co.uk ). Six doubles, from £80 to £120, B&B; three-course dinner £17

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