Devonshire Arms

Must be a pub, with a name like that? Perish the thought – the Devonshire is an extraordinarily welcoming country-house hotel set among the rolling acres of the Duke of Devonshire's Bolton Abbey Estate, just a few miles outside Skipton. It is grand – of course it is, given that the other Devonshire family seat is Chatsworth – and there are portraits, antiques and mementoes on display that keep the ducal connection much in mind. But what it isn't is stuffy or even particularly formal, and with only forty individually designed rooms and suites there's a genuinely familiar welcome backed up by highly polished service. Rooms vary in size and aspect, but most have lovely rural views. Those in the original eighteenth-century part of the hotel (the "old wing") have handcarved fourposters made by the Chatsworth carpenters, while the Wharfedale wing rooms have been more recently refurbished, but throughout you're talking elegant fabrics, excellent bathrooms, a keen sense of modern country style and classy little extras – like umbrellas at the door and hot chocolate delivered to your room at night (or, at the other end of the scale, the hotel's own helipad out on the lawn). Dining is similarly approachable – seasonal tasting menus in the Burlington restaurant, easy-going in the contemporary Brasserie and Bar – while over the road the Health Barn offers up pool, jacuzzi, sauna, gym, spa treatments, tennis and mountain bikes for guests. The whole thing's a treat and can barely be faulted.