The best place to stay in central England is just a half-hour drive from Swindon.

The Sunday Times crowned Thyme in Gloucestershire the regional winner in its Best Places To Stay guide of the top 100 UK hotels.

Thyme is a family-run 'village within a village set beside water meadows on a working farm in Southrop - just a short trip up the A361.

The newspaper called the Cotswolds hotel "a Disney-perfect vision of the English countryside."

It added: "The collection of historic buildings, including dilapidated barns, cottages and a 19th-century rectory, has been turned into a gorgeous place to stay, with neatly clipped lawns, roses climbing the walls, giant alliums nodding in the borders and a vast cedar tree that’s been around since 1750.

"There are a lot of American guests, and they must wonder if this is the English country life dream. It is."

The hotel complex features a spa and cookery school. The farm's vegetable plots supply the Ox Barn restaurant.