No 131

No 131 has Cheltenham Ladies' College for a neighbour and more than 400 gins in its bar, Gin & Juice, which stays open until half past two on Fridays and Saturdays. The hotel is three Georgian townhouses on the Promenade, facing Imperial Gardens, and the period bones have been dressed for the evening: panelling in grey-green and deep blue, original work by David Hockney and Banksy, and a dining room under a gold ceiling with black lacquer and Japanese prints below. Ask for one of the Excellent rooms with a freestanding Rogeat bath from Lyon, reconditioned and dating back to 1875. There are no lifts anywhere, and a few rooms have a spiral staircase inside them, a climb best attempted before the gin.

Recommended for a night out in Cheltenham that ends upstairs, and for race days, with the racecourse under two miles away by car. Gin & Juice has DJs every weekend; Bar Tokyo, hidden inside the building, serves small Tokyo plates with its cocktails and asks guests to dress for them. While the Terrace restaurant is remade it has moved inside to YOKU, where one menu runs from breakfast to dinner and takes in both a sushi counter and a Sunday roast. The Family Room gives the children's twin beds a room of their own, but Gin & Juice is over-21s from Friday to Sunday, so a family weekend belongs to the restaurant and the gardens opposite. On the front terrace the Coffee Garden serves coffee, matcha and pastries from nine until three, and from Monday to Thursday three is when Gin & Juice opens, so the coffee hands straight over to the gin.