Weekend visitors to west Wales have a habit of haring across Carmarthenshire without so much as a gift shop stop while en route to the cliffs, coves and pretty seaside villages of neighbouring Pembrokeshire. Yet the county has plenty of enchantments of its own. Carmarthenshire is framed by the Brecon Beacons national park to the east, the Cambrian mountains to the north and miles of sandy beaches along the south coast.

Dubbed the garden of Wales, this fertile region is also a centre of the culinary Cymru renaissance (Llanboidy cheese with laver bread is well worth a nibble). So there's lots to do and eat, but where are you going to sleep?

Coedllys Country House near St Clears is a renovated farmhouse in 12 acres of open countryside. There are only three guest rooms, which allows proprietors Valerie and Keith Harber to offer a personal, kindly-distant-relatives' touch. When they're not attending to guests or looking after the goats, ponies and donkeys in their mini animal sanctuary, the Harbers run week-long courses on how to manage a successful bed and breakfast business.

It's a busy lizzy place with a cottage garden filled with ducks, chickens, flower pots, cartwheels, old ploughs and swinging seats.

Inside is a sweet pea combustion of floral print, chintz cushions, rustic touches and Victorian flourish with enough chamber pots and bed warmers to supply a first world war field hospital.

The bespoke cooked breakfast - eggs donated by the clutch of hens roaming freely about the place - is accompanied by umpteen types of cereal and jam. The sizeable bedrooms are supplied with fresh fruit, chocolate from the nearby Pembertons Welsh chocolate farm and a choice of tea and coffee to suit all conceivable tastes and there are well-stocked pamper baskets in the bathroom.

This is home from home; assuming that your home is stuffed with nice and old sturdy wooden furniture, comfy antique beds and has been pepper-sprayed with nick-nacks, and, of course, that you own a peacock.

Llangynin, nr St Clears, Carmarthenshire (01994 231455, www.coedllyscountryhouse.co.uk) £32.50pp per night. £15/£21 for a two-/three-course dinner by arrangement.

Justine Hankins