Travel

Three of Britain's best B&B breaks

It's "odds on for a barbecue summer", says the Met Office. Combine that with a weak pound and 2009 is fast becoming the year of the Great British Holiday – why pay for overpriced continental coffee when you could enjoy your breakfast at one of these fabulous British guesthouses?

Augill Castle in Cumbria has just been named the English Tourist Board's best English bed-and-breakfast retreat. Housed in a Victorian folly dating from 1841, the place has a distinctly Gothic feel, thanks to its turrets, stained-glass windows and four-poster beds. One room even boasts a four-poster bath.

This rather unusual house was once a correction facility for boys. Fortunately, the current owners seek only to indulge guests. The most striking room is the dining room, says Jane Knith in The Times, with its blue-panelled ceiling and large central table where guests dine together. "Breakfast, which rarely starts before nine and continues until the last person struggles downstairs, sees the table groaning with homemade bread, the best Cumberland bacon, local oak-smoked salmon and free-range eggs from the farm next door."

For a truly flamboyant home from home, try the Crazy Bear in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. "Imagine this, if you can – Liberace lives. He visits the Moulin Rouge, Las Vegas, a Sixties bordello in Soho and the planet Mars. He picks up elements from all of them, mixes them together and stuffs the result into the oldest and most historic building in nice, comfortable conservative Beaconsfield."

That's the Crazy Bear, says Fiona Duncan in The Daily Telegraph. The main staircase is laced with 24-carat gold leaf, many ceilings are decorated with fur, and there are copper baths at the end of the beds. If that all sounds a bit cheesy, fear not: "it's the admirable attention to detail that keeps tackiness – and nausea – at bay", says Duncan.

The only room that isn't ostentatious is the English restaurant. Here, high-quality ingredients are cooked beautifully. The menu includes delicious razor clams, rockfish soup and pan-fried calves' liver.

For something more traditional, head to The Howard Arms in the Cotswolds. "Decor is straight from the handbook of posh contemporary innkeeping," says Vincent Crump in The Sunday Times Travel Magazine – think scrubbed 17th-century brickwork and chairs "plundered from country churches".

But it's the food that sets the place apart. The owners are so obsessesed with homegrown produce that they claim they will even accept it as payment in place of cash. So, "ask for the chef and do a deal with him". A blackboard in the dining room lists every local supplier – eggs, for example, come from "Audrey down the lane". The menu celebrates traditional English cuisine and includes Cotswold lamb with cider and rosemary cobbler or beef, ale and mustard pie.

Roll on a glorious British summer!

At a glance

Augill Castle

Kirby Stephen, Cumbria
Rooms cost from £80 for bed and breakfast.
Contact: 01768-341937; Stayinacastle.com.

The Howard Arms

Ilmington, Warwickshire
Double rooms from £115 for B&B.
Contact: 01608-682226; Howardarms.com.

Crazy Bear

Beaconsfield, Bucks
Rooms cost from £215 for B&B.
Contact: 01494-673086; Crazybeargroup.co.uk.