We’ve only been in the place for five minutes when Finlay decides to put one of the staff to the kid test.
My son’s two and a half years old. He’s been stuffed in a car seat for about a century (that’s a three hour drive from London in adult time) and, after a nice long kip, he’s full of beans and looking for something to severely damage. He finds it at the top of a creaking old 200-year-old staircase as the night manager guides us to our first floor room.
On the oak-panelled landing is a pig. A big, beautifully-painted wooden pig that has the look of something old, antique and vaguely expensive about it. I’m too slow catching the gleam in Fin’s eye. He’s across the floor like a pint-sized Usain Bolt. He throws himself on the pig. There’s a brief struggle and the pig loses. Loses an ear to be exact. As the wooden extremity hits the rug, I cast a stricken gaze at the concierge, braced for a stern lecture, and possibly a stern damages bill. He chuckles. ‘Happens all the time,’ he says. ‘The kids all love that bloomin’ pig.’

Our man is equally sanguine when Fin and big sister Scarlett, 5, are so delighted by our huge suite, full of charming hodge-podge of old (ie pricey) furniture and with amazing sea views, that they indulge in a little light trampolining on the beds before their mum and I can rein them in. Kid test successfully passed as far as I’m concerned. And I’m liking the place a lot already.

Moonfleet is a Georgian manor house hidden at the end of a winding, tree-lined two-mile country lane. It crouches behind the outrageous natural pebble breakwater of Chesil Bank (rife with tales of 18th smugglers and ne’er-do-wells), next to a lagoon that stretches all the way to Portland. It’s one of those rare top-end hotels that are family-friendly in an Enid Blyton ‘let ‘em run loose and get a bit sweaty and grubby’ kind of way. Hell, there’s even a bright-eyed, slightly whiffy hotel dog that wouldn’t look out of place in a Famous Five yarn. Weymouth, with it’s loveable mix of posh yachties and kiss me quick seafront, is 15 minutes drive away. There’s kid-friendly fossiling aplenty to be had up the coast at Lyme Regis and wildlife to be petted and chased around at the Swannery in Abbotsbury, a couple of miles up the road. The hotel’s got a smart, grown-up edge to it, lots of attractive wall hangings, paintings and object d’art, without ever sliding into that butt-clenching ‘What will my little darlings smash first?’ feel that haunts some luxury hotels. None of the staff bat an eyelash as Scarlett, Fin and a host of other kids of varying ages and sizes bound in and out of the smart breakfast room and on to the rolling lawns thoughtfully filled with trampolines and assorted toys.

I think what’s so relaxing is that high stone walls make kiddy escape bids impossible, meaning you don’t spend the whole time biting your nails about the whereabouts of your offspring. One of my favourite bits comes on Sunday, practically as we’re getting into the car to go home. We decide to explore a non-descript, windowless two-story building that seems to have been grafted onto one side of the hotel. Up a flight of stairs, round a corner and there it is – an open space roughly the size of an aircraft hangar but coated in green baize and containing a crazy cornucopia of kiddie distractions. A mini indoor tennis court, a pool table, a huge trampoline. And it’s totally empty.
We all look at each, grinning with delight, then go a little bit mad. Within seconds, Scarlett is pinging off the sides of the trampoline netting, whooping wildly, Fin is playing an obscure form of pool that involves crawling on top of the table and throwing the balls into the pockets and Jane and I are thwop-ing a burst tennis ball viciously at each other while pretending not to be competitive about it. It ends in tears of course. My two have to be dragged sobbing to the car, two little angels unwilling hauled out of kiddie heaven by devil dad. It takes an unfeasible amount of ice cream and sweet-related bribery to get them to insincerely agree that no, we probably couldn’t stay there forever.

Despite the emotional carnage, I walk away happy, relaxed even. As you know, not the usual state of mind after a weekend away with small children. In fact, I’m feeling so good about our Moonfleet experience that when we come across a shady-looking couple broken down on the side of the A31, I don’t lock the doors and drive hurriedly off. Instead, I drive to a garage several miles away and return with a plastic can of charity petrol. What’s not to like about a hotel that turns you into a better human being?