The Running Horses

This old 16th-century inn sits on what once upon a time would have been the main Brighton-London road, in the centre of the pretty village of Mickleham, which sits right by scenic Box Hill, the highest point on the North Downs. It's a village pub basically, and all the better for it, with a cosy bar and roaring fire, and catering to locals as well as guests. The name stems from its time as a place for stabling racehorses from nearby Epsom, but its glory days were as a popular coaching inn on the said main road – days which have now been revived, as it's once again a comfortable place to stay, although its location as the focal point of the village is a much quieter one since they built the bypass.

They have eight guest rooms, all en-suite and mostly very spacious. Each room is named after a different racecourse and tastefully furnished with wifi, tea and coffee facilities, ultra-comfy Hypnos beds, bathrooms with posh toiletries and rather nice luxury rain showers, while two also have roll top baths. Downstairs they serve a very nice, deliberately simple and pleasingly short menu of rustic food that changes regularly but always includes a selection of steaks and other pub classics. It's a cosy, unpretentious bolthole – great for blowing the cobwebs off jaded Londoners, and perfect as a base for scaling the heights of Box Hill.