Pack your things – The Good Hotel Guide has revealed its 46th annual list of 12 César winners
Drum roll please, the results are in. The Good Hotel Guide, now in its 46th edition, has announced its 12 César winners for 2023. Award winners include a hotel run by aristocracy with a well-being focus, a former motorway service station on the M6, a Grade I listed townhouse where the in-room coffee maker can be found in a doll’s house and foodie properties aplenty.
The 12 latest Césars (which are named after the famous Swiss hotelier César Ritz) are given to the hotels, inns and B&Bs considered outstanding in their particular category – resulting in a “must go” list of places to stay for those planning weekend breaks and holidays in Great Britain and Ireland.
For those not familiar with the awards, The Good Hotel Guide is the only truly independent hotel guide in the United Kingdom – properties can’t purchase their way into print and their inspectors cannot accept free hospitality in return for coverage.
The winners are as follows:
1 Best country hotel: Forest Side, Grasmere, Cumbria
Michelin-starred cuisine (with 90 per cent of the produce sourced from a ten-mile radius), elegant bedrooms and red squirrels in the garden are the successful recipe for this 20-room hotel.
2 Best city hotel: No.15 by GuestHouse, Bath, Somerset
This boutique property occupies a trio of Grade I listed town houses in a Georgian terrace that are home to eclectic rooms with a touch of whimsy such as a coffee maker in a doll’s house.
3 Best B&B: Cambridge House, Reeth, Yorkshire
A warm welcome with cake, sweeping views over Swaledale and local advice on the best walks and good places for dinner from owners Sheila and Robert Mitchell set this B&B apart.
4 Best pub with rooms: The Double Red Duke, Clanfield, Oxfordshire
Georgie and Sam Pearman’s 17th-century Cotswold stone inn comes with a country-chic air in its carefully designed rooms, with luxurious fabrics, hand-blocked wallpaper and wooden furniture.
5 Best Hotel South:The Pig in the Forest, Brockenhurst, Hampshire
This was the first of a new breed of hotels opened by Robin Hutson in 2011 and it’s still the best, having reinvented the English country hotel with a hip not hooray atmosphere.
6 Best Hotel South West: The Henley, Bigbury-on-Sea, Devon
Renowned for its friendliness, the nightly-changing evening meals by co-owner Martyn Scarterfield are best enjoyed in the garden room with its spectacular views over the sands to Burgh Island.
7 Best Hotel East Anglia: Morston Hall, Holt, Norfolk
Birdwatchers and bon vivants alike beat a path to Tracy and Galton Blackiston’s friendly and relaxed Michelin-starred restaurant-with-rooms in a flint farmhouse, right on Blakeney nature reserve’s doorstep.
8 Best Hotel Midlands: The Falcon, Castle Ashby, Northamptonshire
Lord Northampton (aka the Mystic Marquess) and his wife Tracy have placed well-being right at the core of their reinvented 16th-century coaching inn on the Castle Ashby estate.
9 Best Hotel North: Westmorland Hotel, Penrith. Cumbria
Formerly Tebay Services Hotel, this Lake District hotel on the M6 offers quiet rooms with fell views, unfussy but tasty Cumbrian food, excellent value for money and what readers describe as a feeling of ‘peace and well-being’.
10 Best Hotel Scotland: Eddrachilles, Scourie, Highland
A youth hostel in the 1950s, the rooms of this magical place on the water overlooking Badcall Bay have had a major refurb while many readers report that the nightly changing menu of food and breakfast is delicious.
11 Best Hotel Wales: Penally Abbey, Tenby, Pembrokeshire
Owner and interior designer Melanie Boissevain has created stylish, relaxing rooms filled with antiques, French market finds, blowsy wallpapers and Persian rugs in this Strawberry Hill Gothic house on the coast a five-minute drive from Tenby.
12 Best Hotel Ireland: The Mustard Seed at Echo Lodge, Ballingarry, County Limerick
Warm Irish hospitality and superb food are on offer at this Victorian country mansion, where the restaurant is a destination in its own right, thanks to Angel Pirev who uses produce from the kitchen garden and orchard.
Established in 1978, the Good Hotel Guide is the only truly independent UK hotel guide – hotels cannot buy their entry into the print edition and neither the editors nor the inspectors accept free hospitality on their anonymous visits to hotels. Now owned by Richard Fraiman, who has been CEO since 2014, the editorial team is headed up by the former travel editor and assistant travel editor of The Times, Jane Knight and Kate Quill, respectively.
The complete Good Hotel Guide features 650 hotels, inns, B&Bs and guesthouses, with 414 main entries and 44 new entries (these being a combination of new properties and new entries to the Guide).
The Good Hotel Guide 46th Edition: Great Britain & Ireland is priced at £20 from all good bookshops.
