An Edwardian hunting lodge, this welcoming, opulent B&B is a perfect base from which to explore Exmoor.

The setting is pure hog heaven at this hotel, surrounded by a deer park in a fold in the Mendips. The part-Georgian building comes in the group's shabby-chic style and there's a kitchen garden with smokehouse, a wild-flower orchard, greenhouse, fruit cages and beehives, hens a-laying, and a 25-mile menu.

In a medieval village overlooked by a red sandstone castle, the one-time guest house for Cleeve Abbey is now a dog-friendly hotel with an onsite hair and beauty salon, a stunning historic bar and 28 bedrooms, some with contemporary furnishings, some with an antique four-poster.

Trained chefs Caroline Gardiner and Alan Lucas have transformed this former village inn into a restaurant offering sustainably sourced menus of beautifully presented food with rustic-chic bedrooms and lodges, making it the perfect place for a country retreat.

Koos Bekker and Karen Roos have brought to Somerset the vision behind their hotel on a Dutch Cape wine estate, creating an idyll around Palladian Hadspen manor house, with farm-to-fork dining, dreamy spa, unique rooms in converted outbuildings, beautiful gardens – and a Roman villa as well as two interactive museums.

At the heart of the Dyer family's dairy farm, with views to the Quantock hills, this B&B with onsite café occupies a 15th-century, red sandstone manor house, where log fires burn and an Aga-cooked breakfast is served at a 20ft oak table in the Great Hall, the walls hung with fearsome pikes and hallberds.