Great For: Gourmet Escapes, Romantic stay 

To paraphrase a famous nursery rhyme, one little piggy went to Hampshire, one little piggy went to Dorset and one little piggy went to near Bath. What do we mean by that? Well, a few years back Robin Huston established the “Pig in Hampshire” - a quintessentially English place to stay and eat. The concept was so successful that it grew to include other litters, so to speak, and now we also have the Pig near Bath, in Somerset. 

And how can one best describe it? It’s been called a “restaurant with rooms”. Sure enough, food is an extremely important part of a stay here with its focus on fresh produce sourced locally or from the garden (which guests can freely wonder around). The eggs laid by the resident chickens will probably be part of your breakfast. But having said this, it is also so much more than that. The Pig near Bath is a beautiful property in itself that manages to convey a sort of delightfully unpretentious “shabby chic” with re-used furniture, including an eclectic combination of sofas, table and chairs. Restaurant with rooms? Yes twenty-nine of them, large and all aesthetically done up in earthy colours. It requires real taste and no end of class to pull something like that off and the Pig near Bath does it with aplomb, giving the hotel a luxurious air. 

And yet it is all so unpretentious. Staff are, without exception, delightfully helpful and easy going, food is top notch and variable (menus are dependent on what’s available on the day), decoration is simple, yet tasteful to the point of high sophistication which makes a stay (and meal) here so worthwhile and a great base from which to discover the delights of this part of Somerset. 

And if the stay and food all gets too much for you, then there’s always the Potting Shed (an original garden shed that has been transformed into a treatment room) where guests can also enjoy a great massage and beauty treatment.