Guide readers are unswervingly loyal to this family-friendly country house by the sea, with peerless views to Snowdonia across Cardigan Bay, run by the Fletcher-Brewer family since opening in 1948.

You could not wish for a more glorious location than you find at Lorraine Hinkins and Alex Yorke's 18th-century farmhouse B&B, with views to Cader Idris and Tal-y-llyn lake.

On an open plain a short drive from Snowdonia National Park, the Murphy family's country house, well liked by trusted readers, offers comfortable, well-equipped bedrooms, two with patio doors to the garden, and set-price menus of locally sourced dishes.

In wooded grounds on the edge of Snowdonia National Park, this neo-Jacobean Victorian mansion, which once hosted Winston Churchill (he'd have liked the whisky and cigar lounge), has lavish bedrooms and suites in high traditional style, an all-day bar menu and fine-dining restaurant.

There is nowhere in the world quite like Sir Clough Williams-Ellis's Italianate resort village, where hotel bedrooms are spread around various properties, centred on a Victorian mansion on wooded slopes above the sandy beaches of the Dwyryd estuary.

Kindly hostess Eluned Rowlands welcomes guests to her B&B – a stylishly renovated granite cowshed on the edge of Snowdonia –with tea and Welsh cakes, supplies bedrooms with fresh fruit and sherry, and serves a good Aga-cooked breakfast.

A Victorian black-and-white building refurbished for the 21st century above a disused slate quarry and the old Llechwedd mine, this easygoing Snowdonia hotel offers a choice of smart in-house bedrooms for comfort lovers, glamping tents for hardier souls, and off-grid moorland shepherds' huts for a stay on the wild side.

Two 16th-century buildings above Edward I's formidable castle with views of sea and Snowdonia comprise this inn with seven well-presented bedrooms, an aviation-themed bar, and a restaurant serving modern British cooking with a Thai twist.