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4 THE DEVONSHIRE ARMS Beeley, Derbyshire The Devonshire Arms is the sort of proper old country pub where it should be compulsory to drink Theakston’s Old Peculier. To deserve its oak beams and mullioned nooks and crannies, you should really have walked for hours across the Peak District dales, arriving ruddy-cheeked, windswept and ready to collapse beside the log fire.

The bedrooms to bag are the newly opened cottage quartet. Within nodding distance of the chickens, goats and ducks that live next door, they are elegantly stripey, and some have big, indulgent bathrooms.

Dinner can be eaten in the pub or the conservatory brasserie. Either way, it’s reassuringly British: bangers and mash, Barnsley chop, Chatsworth Old Spot belly pork. Breakfast involves sausage sarnies, egg soldiers and kippers. Doubles from £125, B&B; 01756 718111, www.devonshirebeeley.co.uk

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5 THE KINGHAM PLOUGH Kingham, Oxfordshire The chef-proprietor, Emily Watkins, used to be Heston Blumenthal’s sous chef, so foodies will be more than satisfied with the main draw - a restaurant with Michelin tendencies, but where three courses often come in at less than £25. The triple-cooked chips are a homage to Watkins’s Fat Duck days, but the menu is more of a guide than a guarantee - dishes can change in a flash if someone stops by mid-afternoon with tempting produce.

The bar is a fine place to fold out a newspaper, rest your feet on a log and work your way through the real ales. The rooms, though, are surprisingly feminine and Frenchified, with powder-blue and pastel-pink colour schemes, and bathrooms crammed into quirky corners.

If that’s not enough, Kingham has been voted England’s favourite village by Country Life, and the Bamford Hay Barn Spa is just down the road. Doubles from £85, B&B; 01608 658327, www.thekinghamplough.co.uk

6 THE RAGGED COT Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire There’s more than a whiff of designer welly about this 17th-century Cotswolds inn: the wall-mounted trowels, the Colefax fabrics, the olives on the bar. It’s so wonderfully unstuffy, however, that it’s still extremely popular with the locals. Rooms are distinctly contemporary - muted mushroom decor, bespoke silk drapes and black-slate bathrooms, with cute touches such as a complimentary twist of homemade fudge.

The food will remind you of Tom Brown’s School Days: jellied ham hocks and spotted dick, eaten at scrubbed-clean wooden tables and sit-up-straight church pews. And outside the door are 600 acres of National Trust loveliness, for striding and riding excursions. Doubles from £120, B&B; 01453 884643, www.theraggedcot.co.uk

7 THE OLDE BELL Hurley, Berkshire Hurley’s stone cottages are the colour of old gold, rambling with roses and glossy with yews, and the gaps between the hedges offer glimpses of the Thames coursing regally down to Henley. Its 12th-century coaching inn has always been pretty as a picture, and this summer the designer Ilse Crawford took over, intent on bringing to it a touch of the style she introduced to Babington House.

A warning, though: the chintz is still in the process of being chucked, so ask for a revamped room (to date, they’ve made over numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 and 11). These are fuss-free and spacious, using lots of tasteful rush matting and touches such as rocking chairs softened with lambswool throws.

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