If there were a national Loo with a View Award, jokes Sue Robinson, the bathroom in Nanny Brow's Brathay suite would walk away with it. She has a case. Like all the rooms at the front of her luxury guesthouse, it looks out, for miles, across Brathay Valley to Wrynose Pass. The Lake District is often dramatic and brutal but this bucolic scene of woodlands, fells and distant mountains, bisected by a lazy, winding river, is framed in each window like a Turner or Constable. It is a magnificent sedative.
This is walkers' country, and Robinson will happily dry hiking and cycling gear in the cellar. Others come to explore the house itself. Built in 1904 by Arts and Crafts architect Francis Whitwell, Nanny Brow is something of a place of pilgrimage for design fans. Robinson, whose other property, a Cotswolds B&B, is also an Arts and Crafts house, can give interested visitors chapter and verse on Nanny Brow's original plasterwork friezes and colourful tiled fireplaces.
Not that Robinson's renovation of Nanny Brow, which she opened in August, is an exact period restoration. Far from it. There is little Arts and Crafts furniture (Robinson finds it austere and the beds are too narrow). Instead, the eight bedrooms and lounge have been elegantly updated in a conservative contemporary style, mixing smart blackout blinds, understated designer wallpapers and flatscreen TVs, with key original features and antique furniture.
In my room, the wardrobe door sticks a little, and I spill a drink bumping against the rather lightweight writing table. Such is the price of character. In its key features, however – the comfy sleigh bed, the size of its immaculate rooms, the huge, powerful double shower (none of that old house/shonky plumbing, here) – Nanny Brow delivers with slick efficiency. The details are winning, too, such as the shoe polish and sewing kits in each room. "The thing," says Robinson, "is to make it homely."
Food is very limited but of good quality. The evening "meal" is a sandwich or a platter of local cheeses, Cartmel Valley meats and artisan breads, followed by one of Robinson's desserts. Her apple and raspberry crumble, topped with Grasmere gingerbread, is sensational. Breakfast is similarly well-executed, although the weekday breakfast window of 8am to 8.30am seems ridiculously narrow, and I could have done without Radio 2 while I was eating.
After dinner, I take myself off to explore the hotspots and fleshpots of Ambleside (taxi, £5). It is not a banging night out. Zeffirellis (015394 33845, zeffirellis.com) and Fellinis (015394 32487, fellinisambleside.com), twin arts venues and vegetarian restaurants, are hubs of the local scene, while The Golden Rule (015394 32257, goldenrule-ambleside.co.uk) is an OK pub that serves Robinsons' so-so beers. Nick's Kitchen (015394 34943, nickskitchen.co.uk) is reputedly a good place to grab lunch. The eponymous Nick Foster was formerly head chef at the excellent Drunken Duck (015394 36347, drunkenduckinn.co.ukcorrect), which is also worth visiting, if you have a car.
In retrospect, I should have stayed put at Nanny Brow. Taking a book down to its plush, cosy lounge and sinking a few beers from Cumbrian Legendary Ales is, I suspect, the best night "out" you will find in Ambleside.
• First TransPennine Express (tpexpress.co.uk) has returns from Manchester to Windermere from £15
