Pub Awards: Best Inn Winner - The Cartford Inn, Lancashire

The management couple, who have a lifetime of experience in the hospitality trade – as well as Julie’s mother being a hospitality lecturer – are dedicated to running every aspect of this impressive, traditional inn with precise detail and premium, luxury offerings. Even the car park is one of the best you will find in the pub industry.

The bar and interior dining space offers a cool, artistic space, full of carefully chosen local artists’ paintings and funky light fittings and posters, all around a long, well-lit bar. The rear dining area offers spectacular views across the Wyre and out towards the Lakes, providing a quiet, beautiful spot to enjoy the superb French brasserie-style food offer.

Food

The food is gastropub quality with a wide range of fish, meat and vegetarian dishes available. Patrick, himself a very able cook, has created a menu which has starred in The Top 50 Gastropubs – and it’s not hard to see why. Perfectly cooked fish, locally sourced meat, and incredible calamari grace the menu alongside more on-trend fayre produced from smoking meats.

The accommodation is comfortable and warm, in the ways of a traditional inn, but with the luxury, premium element expected from a high-class hotel – and one fitting the Beaume’s background in this sector. Rooms range from the truly stunning penthouse suite to the much smaller doubles – but at each price point the offer is detailed, well-thought through and beautifully created from Julie Beaume’s passion for interior design.

Outside, a River House offers private dining experiences across two floors – and the dining patio, overlooking the panoramic valley view, is a wonder to behold for any diner, at any time of year.