A hideous cold has put what feels like sandpaper in my throat and treacle in my brain. Yet I haven't spent very long at all in the company of B&B owner Fina Jurado, before I feel miraculously better.
Horse-y, historic Midhurst, with its ruined castle, polo club and peaceful river walks, used to have a restaurant called Gaudi's, run by Fina and her husband Jac. The tale unfolds on the B&B's sunny rear terrace as she chats, fusses over me and pours tea from Wedgwood china. After 30-odd years, Jac decided he'd had enough, but Fina … well, Fina had enough steam for a new career. So she's converted the restaurant back to a house (actually it was four tiny, old houses originally, and parts are medieval) and by way of modern extension, created a five-bedroom B&B, four rooms up and one down.
"Everyone told me I was crazy," she says.
If this is crazy, commit me now. I simply love the place. The oldest part of the house is all low beams and cosy nooks, and opens on to the street. The rear is spacious and filled with light. Contemporary resides happily with antiquity in the two sitting rooms and a dining area. (I have the run of all this.) Modern Italian Caligaris table and chairs look sleek beneath oak beams, there's a pretty vintage mirror in the black-tiled downstairs loo, and heavy perspex lamps atop delicate mahogany tables.
When the house is booked for exclusive use, Fina will offer dinner in the evening. Which is exactly what she has just done, she says, last night. For a party of lawyers who are already corporate regulars. Since there are "leftovers" from that evening, she has offered to cook again, so that I can try it out. Beautiful though the place is, I get the feeling regulars come as much for the Fina treatment as the house.
At dinner, leftovers are anything but, and Jac comes temporarily out of retirement, for the sole purpose, it seems to me, of curing my cold with Spanish wine.
"Don't take a pill – have some of this," he says putting a splash more Valdepeñas into my glass as I reach for the tissues.
Since this is a B&B review, however, I must focus on bed (a bateau lit, or sleigh bed, beneath beams and exposed brick, the room a luxurious encounter with silk, cotton and velvet), and breakfast, back at the refectory table. As with everything else, it is a work of art. From pink roses to fresh juice in cut glass, from bittersweet marmalade to pastries, and smoked salmon with scrambled egg scattered with chives and piled on to a toasted muffin.
Fina, if you opened a B&B in a coal mine, I'd visit. What a find. Especially as The Chuch House also turns out to be a cure for the common cold.
• Accommodation was provided by The Church House
