Well here’s an absolute treat of a little place to stay: The Gunton Arms in Norfolk. It provides what is, arguably, the perfect low-key country escape. If you yearn for remoteness and the chill whip of an autumnal wind as you stomp across fields with your hound in tow then you will love The Gunton. Equally if you like the idea of remoteness and the chill whip of an autumnal wind but don’t actually want to go out in it and would rather stay indoors in front of a roaring fire drinking red wine and eating Cromer Crab and a huge Blythburgh Pork Chop then you will love The Gunton.

This place is undersold, in my opinion, because they call it a “pub with bedrooms” and although the description is factually accurate, it’s sort of like calling The Shard an office block, or saying that the Sahara is a bit dusty. With The Gunton’s exquisite food menu, the dramatic open cooking fire that dominates the dining room and the sort of stylish, roughed-up country house luxe bedrooms that you’d expect from a pricey boutique hotel, it’s so much more than the vision that “pub with rooms” conjures up.
I’ve been trying to find the right words to describe it and keep coming back to the same two: comfortable and alive. A strange duo of words to pick, maybe, but that’s how the whole place felt to me. On the one hand it was comfortable, like a big old armchair that you could flop down into, all the edges softened by years o...