Chetco River Inn, Brookings, Oregon

Sometimes, amazing things just fall into your hands. We had to make our way from Portland down to Lake Tahoe a couple of weeks ago, and needed a staging post to split the journey up into two (very long) days' drive. I grabbed a map, found a town about halfway between the two places, looked it up in a guidebook and booked a night in the first likely-looking B&B.

I wish I'd booked a whole week.

The Chetco River Inn (21202 High Prairie Road, Brookings, OR, 97415 - email chetcoriverinn@hughes.net, tel. (541) 251-0087) is an utterly charming bed and breakfast in the middle of one of the Pacific coast's temperate rainforests. These forests are magical: so damp that the all the trees are festooned with mosses and sharp-tongued ferns, they teem with wildlife. To reach the inn, you'll need to drive 20 miles down a narrow road, un-metalled in places, with dripping trees overhanging the roadway and the pristine Chetco river bubbling alongside. The inn itself is perfectly positioned in glorious isolation by the river, and is popular with botanists, with hikers and with fishermen, who arrive for the salmon run in the autumn and stay over the winter for the steelheads. If you are lucky, you'll find fish fresh from the river on the inn's dinner table.

We arrived just in time for supper, and Sandra and Clay, the owners, were waiting for us at the inn with their Scottie dogs and a vat of steaming French Onion soup. We found ourself enjoying this and a beautifully prepared, enormous prime rib with a fishing group, who shared their wine (Oregon's Pinot Noirs are particularly good, and we had a great time sampling them) with us in return for some of the microbrewery beer we'd brought down from Portland. Sandra's freshly made banana ice cream was a rich and custardy end to the very generous meal.

We'd booked the cottage at the inn, a separate building only a few years old with accommodation for four. (These photos are taken about twenty paces from the cottage's front door.) This lovely little cabin will sleep two downstairs, where there is a large jacuzzi and well-stocked bathroom; and two in a wonderfully comfortable king-sized bed up on a mezzanine level, overlooking the living area and kitchen. We had the place to ourself, and had one of the most romantic evenings we've ever experienced, falling asleep to the light flickering from the log stove which heats the cottage, and the sound of the dripping trees and night birds.

The weather in the Siskiyou National Forest is always wet but wonderfully atmospheric, with rains for most of the winter - temperate rainforests do not freeze in the cold months, and you'll find surprisingly warm, sunny days in the middle of the coldest months - and mists in the cool summer. We got up before dawn for an early breakfast so that we could watch the steel-grey, winter light rise over the river, the clouds boiling and rolling off the forest. Sandra and Clay prepare a breakfast of legendary proportions. A sugar-dusted, maple syrup-soaked Dutch baby pancake, sausages, delicious home-fried potatoes and gallons of good coffee and juice set us up for a walk along the riverside. In a couple of hour's gentle stroll along the shingle we'd seen an otter, an elk and a simply astonishing selection of birds. (Sandra informs me that the otters are surprisingly tame, and that summer guests who swim in the river, which is the United States' cleanest, will often find the otters swimming alongside them.) A short drive away you'll find Oregon's exceptionally scenic Pacific coast, where the beaches are often deserted, while a little further south are the giant redwood forests.

This place is paradise. I'm already planning our next trip.

De Vere Grand hotel, Brighton

Here in the UK, we've just had a bank holiday weekend. True to form, the weather took the opportunity to stop being gloriously balmy, and did a very fine impression of somewhere north of the Arctic circa Noah. (I'm being perfectly serious here: the Met Office put out news yesterday informing us that this weekend, the UK was colder than Alaska.) Of course, this freezing, soaking weekend happened to be the weekend we had tickets for Cosi fan tutte at Glyndebourne, where I'd hoped to picnic in the garden; and a hotel room booked in Brighton, where I'd hoped to make use of the beach. Fat chance.

It's usually pretty difficult to find a hotel room within reach of Glyndebourne during the opera festival, and many local hotels insist that you take a room for at least two days if you're there over the weekend. I managed to find a breathtakingly expensive room for a single night at the De Vere Grand in Brighton, ten miles from Glyndebourne, which boasts five stars and an interesting history (it's the hotel which was bombed by the IRA during the 1984 Conservative conference, and it's opposite the burned-out remains of the West Pier).

£210 will find you a large room in the front of the hotel, with a big picture window looking over the English Channel and the curiously beautiful ruins of the West Pier. £210 is a large sum to be paying for a non-suite room (that's about $420 for American readers), and I expect something pretty fine for the money, especially in a hotel boasting five stars. I'm still bewildered by the curate's egg of an experience we had in our 24 hours at the hotel, where the staff were, on the whole, charming, helpful and solicitous; the room seriously sub-standard; and the check in/out experience a total nightmare.

First, the good. On arriving at the hotel, having carried Dr Weasel's dinner jacket from the car in a torrential downpour, I was greeted by the concierge who took it from me, and told me he'd dry it and have it delivered to the room. He not only dried it (all without asking); he also removed all the cat hairs.

More good: I'd ordered a picnic to be picked up when we arrived, so we could take it to the opera (where it's traditional to spread out on the lawn outside the auditorium in the long interval over champagne, sandwiches, strawberries and cream). The hotel offers a picnic service at around £20 a head, depending on the contents of the hamper. The gentleman I spoke to was charming, and I asked him to surprise us with the picnic contents. I was more than surprised; I was delighted. He'd packed the basket, which came with proper porcelain and cutlery, napkins and a rug, with beautiful roast beef and horseradish cream sandwiches on white bread, and some smoked salmon and cream cheese on brown, all with the crusts neatly sliced off. There were four excellent cheeses, including a wonderfully nutty Comte, all accompanied by some home-made relishes, including a tangy, sweet onion marmalade, and a relish with allspice and fresh apples. A selection of different grapes and celery, along with some lovely little biscuits, accompanied the cheeses. There was a dish of soft fruits: giant blackberries, sweet raspberries, strawberries and blueberries. And most welcome of all, because it was very, very cold at the covered picnic table where we huddled over our hamper, was a huge thermos of fresh coffee, complete with proper china mugs.

More good: breakfast was in the best tradition of the English hotel breakfast. The buffet spread was vast, and offered Continental and English breakfasts, with lovely little black puddings, delicious rosti, a fresh egg station and extremely moreish muffins, all with a view of the sea. The serving staff were some of the most cheerful people I've ever met at eight in the morning. Evening cocktails were also good (they'll be better when the smoking ban comes into force), with some deliciously strong martinis; and it was great to sit in the conservatory at the front of the building and watch the thunder and lightning over the sea. Our wake-up call was on time, and the correct newspapers were delivered.

Unfortunately, I'm struggling to find anything else good to say about the place. Check-in was late, but not insultingly so. This isn't something I'd recognise as a five-star hotel, and I do not expect a room I've forked out £210 on to have fraying carpets, chipped tiles (they'd made an effort at disguising this with something that appeared to be typewriter correction fluid), someone else's shortest, curliest hairs adorning the bathroom, upholstery that's coming apart at the seams, a television that doesn't work and Britain's least comfortable bed. This king-sized plank was actually two planks pushed together with a solid ridge standing proud all the way down the centre, like a Berlin wall between husband and wife. My side had some plasticky, sweat-inducing layer under the bottom sheet, and I woke up glued moistly to the bed down the side where my skin met the mattress. Dr Weasel leapt from bed screaming every time a police car howled past the building, sirens on. It seems there are more events requiring sirens and lights at 3am in Brighton than is, perhaps, natural, and the glazing in this place is very noise-transparent. The radiators were a) fierce, b) unadjustable and c) very emphatically on, so the hotel had accompanied them with an air conditioning unit which, also very emphatically on, whined into the night like a conference of wasps.

That excellent breakfast went a long way to soothe my troubled nerves, and we went to check out with a smile. That smile evaporated when we checked the bill and found a number of cocktails on it which appeared to have been ordered and signed to our room the previous afternoon, while we were ten miles away, soaking up some culture. We explained that this was obviously a mistake, given that we weren't even in the building...and this is where things went badly wrong.

In any other hotel I've stayed in, politely notifying reception of erroneous charges is almost always met with an apology and the erasure of those charges from the final bill. This time, though, the receptionist decided to respond with a cynically raised eyebrow, and she told us that there was no mistake: we had definitely ordered these drinks.

I feel a prat quibbling over a sum that's under £20, but this place had already seen a great deal of our money for a sub-par night, and I found this insistence that we were lying about the drinks massively insulting. On seeing the specifics of the bill, I felt even more insulted - the people who'd signed the drinks to our room had been drinking Shirley Temples.

Several minutes of arguing later, the receptionist took the charge off the bill, announcing righteously that she would be going to the bar later to check the signature on the drinks charge against her record of our own signatures, and charging our card if she found they matched. We stomped out, glowering, and started to drive towards Cambridge, smug in the knowledge that we do not drink Shirley Temples. Ten minutes later, I received a mildly sheepish, mildly apologetic phone call informing me that 'someone had made a mistake', and that we wouldn't be charged for the drinks after all.

So sorry, De Vere Grand - I'm not coming back any time soon. Put some money into refurbishing the rooms, train your receptionists and cleaners as well as you have trained the excellent catering and concierge staff, and perhaps I'll think about it in a few years' time, when I've stopped being piqued about the drinks thing...but for the meantime, I'll be going to the Hotel du Vin around the corner.

George Hotel, Stamford - Seafood platter

Dr Weasel and I spent this week's Bank Holiday Monday in Stamford, where we had our wedding reception in 2004. The George Hotel is one of my favourite places in the country: it's a coaching inn that's been active since around 947 AD, with a gorgeously planted garden, quiet lounges with inglenook fireplaces, comfortable rooms and two very good restaurants. It's in Stamford, a beautiful market town built out of creamy Barnack stone, a few minutes from Burghley House, the palace built by Elizabeth I's treasurer, William Cecil. We spent the morning at Burghley, then stopped at the George for the afternoon to have tea and scones by the fireplace, and read our books.

The hotel is probably the oldest still functioning in the UK. The original coaching inn forms the heart of the building, with the two religious buildings on either side incorporated into the inn about 500 years ago. One side used to be the Holy Sepulchre, a hospital of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The George's historical success came from its position at the side of the old Great North Road, and pilgrims and knights of the Holy Sepulchre stopped here as they travelled from the north down this main conduit on their journey to Jerusalem. There is a crypt beneath the cocktail bar where you can see part of the old hospital, and little architectural details pop out all over the building; trefoils carved in the stone, medieval gateways and the thick walls which once formed the outside of the building, now inside the hotel.

There are two restaurants at The George - the Garden Lounge is smart, but less formal than the Oak Panelled Dining Room, where men are asked to wear a tie. (Dr Weasel had left his in Cambridge when we visited a few years ago, and was given one by the head waiter.) Try the Oak Panelled Dining Room if you get the opportunity; it's an experience simply to sit in the beautiful room, lit only by candlelight. The wine list is fascinating and meticulous, and the food, traditional English dishes like Woodbridge duck, suckling pig and a wonderful sirloin of beef, is always hearty and delicious. (We've looked up from our plates to see Judi Dench eating in the restaurant twice in the last few years - stalkers take note.)

We ate yesterday's meal in the Garden Lounge, where the menu is a bit lighter. The menu changes seasonally, but there are a few constants - the gruyere fritters with a Thai chilli jam have been on the menu since I can remember. I had this gorgeous Brittany Platter - a dressed crab, a langoustine, an oyster (only one, sadly), a clutch of whelks, little palourde clams, cockles, mussels, tiny pink prawns and a huge king prawn. The enormous platter was served with a green salad spiked with celery, home-baked bread, and three home-made mayonnaise sauces; a Marie Rose, a mayonnaise tout simple and an astonishingly good tartare sauce.

The seafood here is always good; this was gloriously fresh. The shellfish, steamed gently, tasted of the sea, and the prawns were sweet and tender. It's always good to find a whelk that's not gritty or slimy, and these whelks accomplished that with aplomb. Grated egg yolk and white garnished the crab, and my, those little clams were a thing of beauty. Remarkably, I nearly managed to finish this; I left about five prawns, a couple of mussels, a whelk and some of the crab's brown meat. Nearly 24 hours have passed, and I'm still full.

If you're in the UK and looking for a weekend away, or if you're visiting England from abroad, do think about spending a couple of days at the George. There's nowhere I know that serves up that mixture of tradition, service and comfort quite as well. Ask for the kippers as part of your enormous breakfast, and tell them I sent you.