The Drawing Room

Outstanding gourmet cuisine, four small-but-perfect rooms, wild mountains on your doorstep - and it's only 3½ hours from London

This is one of very few places in Britain where you can experience genuine wilderness, fine food and sumptuous sleep in one blissful day. Melanie and Colin spent years planning their perfect gourmet hideaway, rejecting France and Cornwall for this handsome Georgian stone house just north of Builth Wells. An odd spot, you might think, but there's great gastronomic pedigree in these mid-Welsh hills, and stunning mountain scenery in the Elan Valley reservoirs and Brecon Beacons.

You step off the road into a pair of cosy-but-stylish drawing rooms: plump leather armchairs, whispering log fires, Ella's soothing tones, and a warm, unpretentious welcome from Melanie in her chef's jacket. It all bodes well for a delightful dinner - which does not disappoint, from the homemade date and walnut bread to melt-in-the-mouth black beef and a sublime lemon sabayon tart. Make sure you've walked long and hard to earn it. Afterwards, smart, compact and immaculately thought out bedrooms – just 4 of them – cosset you with power showers, Fired Earth hues and Penhaligon ointments. Bliss.

Highs

• The cuisine alone makes the journey worth while – largely local, often organic, always cooked to the second, it has all the flavours and delicacy of a Michelin star, but none of the stuffiness
• The walking around the Elan valley is among the best in the country: colourful woods, tumbling streams, fantastic birdlife, and windswept summits to blow any cobwebs away
• Perfect for a romantic weekend away, or you can take the whole place for a special celebration of up to 6 guests

Lows

• Two of the rooms are frankly small, but they're all extremely comfortable and well thought out, and you won't be spending much of the day in them
• You're right on the road, but it is a quiet, little-used spur (a new bypass takes all the A470's through traffic)
• This is a restaurant with rooms, not a hotel, so don't expect all-day reception or swathes of staff (it's just a husband and wife team)
• Dinner needs to be booked ahead, and be aware that you're expected to dine in, unless you've agreed otherwise beforehand