An oasis of calm
Monmouthshire: The Bell at Skenfrith
The last Bell Inn I visited was deep in the West Country and when I opened the door, conversation stopped and pints of scrumpy froze mid-swig. The locals were obviously weighing up whether to flay me with the bar's array of horse brasses and send me on my way.
There are no horse brasses at the Bell at Skenfrith, a seventeenth-century fishing inn west of Ross-on-Wye - I checked. They have obviously been sent back to the restaurant props department, on the shelves with French onion chains and wine bottles heavy with candle wax.
Instead, fresh paintings and monochrome photographs take their place in the bar and restaurant. It's a wonderfully calm space with light oak beams and chalky shades on the walls - more Farrow and Ball than many pubs' nicotine-brown stains (surely in the Dulux Trade range, alongside Curry House Red). The inn is popular with the villagers, but we earwigged accents from Sydney, Texas, Cape Town and Wolverhampton.
It's a perfect setting for the food of chef Leigh Say which has won the Bell plenty of plaudits in the two years since it opened. Modern, light and inventive - and very well executed - using mainly local ingredients, the menu is impressive.
Highlights of our meal were a marinated herring salad and a mushroom risotto with poached egg and Parmesan. The wine list is equally impressive - everything from a £15 New Worlder to a £190 Chteau Latour.
The eight bedrooms feature tranquil colours, white cotton piqué bedlinen, antiques and thoughtful accessories - including a stainless steel flask for walkers' tea or chardonnay. In case of bad weather, or for those addicted to work or Big Brother, the rooms are equipped with an elaborate TV and hi-fi system, DVD player and internet connection.
That flask could come in handy, because the Bell is gloriously situated next to the River Monmow. Just explore Skenfrith itself, with its ruined Norman castle or head further afield. We spent a leisurely afternoon on a six-mile ramble through buttercup meadows, down green lanes and along the bank of the Monmow looking out for otters and kingfishers and seeing, er, a family of ducks. If this is too sedate for you the Bell can arrange activities such as hang gliding.
Offa's Dyke is just a hop and a steep climb away and Hay-on-Wye, home of retired Home Counties bank managers, is a 45-minute drive. The bibliophile's paradise also has its share of pubs proudly displaying those brasses - you've been warned.
Factfile
The Bell at Skenfrith, Skenfrith, Monmouthshire (01600 750235).
Doubles: £85-£150 B&B.
Meals: £50-60 for two excluding wine.
Richard Eilers
Hard to resist the Severn sins
Gloucestershire: The Old Passage Inn
Point the car towards this remote western edge of Gloucestershire and, shortly before you tip into the tidal Severn, you will have passed through Frampton (a gem boasting the longest village green in England) and, just three miles further on, Arlingham. Here the landscape is flat, watery, with rusting boats, church spires, dramatic skies and sleek cattle. You will not come across The Old Passage Inn by chance - it is not en route to anywhere. Built as a farmhouse in the 1830s, it's now a specialist seafood restaurant with rooms managed for the past three years by Josephine Moore with chefs Patrick Le Mesurier and Raoul Moore.
The inn marks the site of an ancient ford across the river to Newnham (whose residents are frustrated to find they have to drive up to Gloucester to cross just to eat on the opposite river bank). Though the building itself is not wildly picturesque, the fine food, panoramas, riverbank walks and atmosphere makes the journey well worthwhile.
There is also the added attraction of flocks of birds winging to the neighbouring Slimbridge wild bird sanctuary founded by Sir Peter Scott in the 1940s.
The 60-seater dining room is squarish, pale green, light and airy with French doors opening on to a riverside terrace. On a Saturday evening in May there was not an empty table. Service is relaxed and smooth without a hint of formality. Most of the wide fish selection on offer is sourced from Cornwall; the crustaceans lurk in tanks (though you do not choose your victim). We couldn't fault our meal. The main courses of bream and hake were so fresh they might have swum onto the plates.
The bedrooms, above the restaurant, are quiet once the diners have dispersed. Our room, 'Green Lipped Mussel', had river views from three sash windows, con temporary stylish furniture and a just-right mattress. The only cavil being the slightly cramped room configuration and feeble water pressure in this remote corner, which means that power showers are out of the question.
Fact file
The Old Passage Inn, Arlingham, Gloucestershire (01452 740547).
Doubles: £90 weekends, £80 midweek. Price includes continental breakfast. Cooked breakfast £5.50 pp. Non-smoking except in small bar. Meals: around £60 for two excluding wine. Vegetarian and meat options.
Lyn Russell
We walked and then waddled
Cumbria: The Drunken Duck Inn, Barngates
At a lonely crossroads with rolling fells, forest and farmland stretching as far as the eye can see in every direction sits the Drunken Duck Inn. Only a solitary wooden signpost reminds you that you are not, as it would first appear, in the middle of nowhere, but just a short hop from some of the Lake District's most popular tourist spots: two miles to Hawkshead, three to Ambleside and four to Coniston.
Housed in a sixteenth-century farmhouse with a grey slate roof, the Duck looks just as a Lakeland inn should; inside is a cosy bar with open fire, white walls and dark beams which leads into the dining room. Across the courtyard is the inn's on-site brewery, which supplies the bar with its award-winning beers (all named after dogs that have lived at the Duck) and an annexe housing 11 guest rooms (there are also a handful above the inn). The rooms, graded as standard, superior or de luxe,are decorated with flair: clean, classy and contemporary and jazzed up with features such as a zebra print bedspread here or a chandelier there. But the pièce de résistance is the Garden Room, a lovely, airy space with a huge picture window running almost the entire length of one wall, looking out onto a bucolic scene of lambs grazing, with the hills of the Fairfield Horseshoe glowering in the distance. There's a balcony, a big fireplace, wicker chairs and wide-screen TV, video player and selection of books and mags. We can't tear ourselves away from the view so we take afternoon tea in the room - it's included in the price - and plan a visit to nearby beauty spot Tarn Hows.
Our little stroll around the tarn turns into a major hike (we get lost) and by the time we arrive for dinner at 8pm we are ravenous. The restaurant is cosy but smart with white tablecloths and candlelight. It's buzzing, even on an off-season week night. We soon discover why. The service is friendly but discreet and everything comes at just the right time. The menu is extensive and the food sublime: I choose juicy crevettes stir-fried with garlic, followed by ginger-marinated pork fillet with black pudding and, finally, roasted figs in port served with goat's cheese ice cream. And with starters averaging £5.25 and main courses for around £12.95 it's excellent value for money.
After dinner we do our own impression of drunken ducks, waddling back to the room, and wake in the morning to the sound of lambs bleating. Over a hearty breakfast we plan a walk to work off some of the calories and kick ourselves for not booking two nights.
Fact file
The Drunken Duck Inn, Barngates, Cumbria (01539 436347).
Doubles from £85 for a standard room mid-week (£110 weekend) to £140 for the Garden Room (£165 weekend). Afternoon tea and cooked breakfast are included in the price.
Joanne O'Connor
Going down to the sunlit sea
Cornwall: The Lugger, Portloe
'The sea, the sea', the 'accomplice of human restlessness', 'struggling to be free and ending just where it began'. Despite what Murdoch, Conrad and Hazlitt say, for the city dweller to be eating bacon and eggs overlooking a harbour between crags in the remotest corner of Cornwall, with the sea lapping and watery light washing through the clouds is almost theologically restful.
The tiny fishing village of Portloe switch-backs to a cove between the cliffs and headlands of the Roseland Peninsula on the Cornish coastal footpath. The Lugger occupies a seventeenth-century shipping inn at the water's edge, with beached fishing vessels on the sand. Within the thick stone walls (whitewashed outside and in) with slate flagstones and low wood-beam ceilings is the restaurant, ultra-cosy log fire-heated sitting room and terrace, with five rooms upstairs. Another 16 rooms nestle in an adjacent building.
There's no room for a swimming pool and a surprising number of 'slickers' take the plunge into the briny English Channel. When you've thawed out by the fire you can assault your stricken heart in another way with freshly baked scones, buttery clotted cream, jam and fresh strawberries.
The Lugger is a short drive from the Eden Project and the Lost Gardens of Heligan but the natural beauty of the cliff paths leading from the hotel surpasses them both.
It's almost essential to take some exercise because a central feature of the Lugger experience is the food. Austrian chef Franz Hornegger cooks up a different four-course table d'hôte menu each night with a comprehensive but pricey wine list (starting from £16.50 for house white). I was a little disappointed by the fare. The griddled John Dory and the fillet of beef were overdone and the seared sashimi tuna steak didn't have enough onion sauce.
The rooms embody luxurious minimalist functionality: white walls and sheets, bleached wood, top quality beds, TV and video (serviced by the library).
The cost of a stay roughly doubled when the inn reopened in March 2002 after an overhaul and under new management. You are paying for the beautiful building and location, and the unparalleled sense of peace and remoteness.
Fact file
The Lugger, Portloe, Cornwall (01872 501322).
Doubles: from £160 (off season), including breakfast. Meal for two: £70, excluding wine.
Tom Templeton
A Star in my eyes
North Yorkshire: The Star Inn
The entries in the visitors' book make very free with the exclamation marks: 'Wonderful!'; 'What a marvellous place!'; 'Amazing pillows!'. Even allowing for Sunday afternoon hyperbole brought on by good food and too much wine, the liberal sprinkling of positive punctuation adds up to quite a review.
Although it is in the middle of nowhere, The Star feels like a world in itself so that it doesn't matter. A 40-minute drive from York, past yellow waving oilseed rape fields and down country lanes lined with bluebells, you might go straight though the village of Harome if it wasn't for the large thatched cottage that holds The Star and its 'corner shop' directly opposite.
The Michelin-star restaurant has been on the go for six years - rooms were added last year - and is a massively popular destination.
The menu features locally sourced ingredients. My roasted asparagus wrapped in bacon was delicious and zinging with freshness, while the main course of duck and bean cassoulet was the most interesting comfort food I've ever had, and came with beautifully presented vegetables in little copper pots. A moist ginger parkin with rhubarb ice cream was a final assault on an already very full stomach, but so gorgeous I don't regret it for a second.
Repairing to the amazing coffee loft after dinner is an essential part of the Star experience. Lavishly furnished with armchairs, couches, cushions and throws, I sat in a haze until it was time for bed.
The rooms are gorgeous and each one is individually designed, adding to the homey feel. Some have a spa bath large enough for two people, for what the brochure quaintly calls 'sociable bathing'.
My room was huge, decorated in muted tones, with delightful bed linen embroidered with tiny stars. A beautiful wood-panelled bathroom is very well-stocked - even supplying tampons, a civilised move which others should follow.
The bedroom stereo, which also has ceiling speakers in the bathroom, comes with a mini library of well-chosen CDs. I soaked in the hot tub and reflected that it was as far from my mental picture of a Yorkshire inn as possible. I would be adding my own exclamation marks to the visitors' book.
Fact file
The Star Inn, Harome, nr Helmsley, North Yorkshire. (01439 770397)
Doubles: from £120. Main courses: £14-£16.
Dee O'Connell
