(AD) Britain is at last learning to holiday at home. It’s taken decades of passport queues, security checks that make you feel like a suspected smuggler, and airports that are nothing but shopping centres with a runway attached. But slowly, haltingly, we’re remembering that this island is ridiculous in its variety. You can drive three hours in any direction and find yourself somewhere unrecognisable, and still find a Tesco within sight.

Exeter is not the Lake District, nor is it Brighton or Bath. It is an old, handsome cathedral city, mostly overlooked by those hurtling down towards Cornwall, except by people who live there who know its a proper gem of a city but like to keep it to themselves. Right in the middle of it all, tucked between Cathedral Green and Princesshay shopping centre, is Hotel Indigo: a boutique hotel that has taken the bones of a grand old department store and reanimated them with a sort of knowing panache. It used to be Colson’s, where ladies of a certain persuasion once bought gloves and hatpins, later Dingles and House of Fraser, and now it is rooms with Egyptian cotton sheets, cocktails on the roof, and a spa burbling away in the basement. The building remembers what it was, and lets you remember too. That’s rare.

We came with the dog, which can sometimes feel like arriving with a badly behaved uncle. Most hotels tolerate dogs in the way hospitals tolerate flowers: with pursed lips and warnings about stains and that’s if they even allow them at all. Indigo, however, actually welcomes them. In the room we found a Clever Paws mat, bowls, and a handwritten note, as if the dog were a valued guest in his own right. He immediately installed himself on the mat with a sigh of deep satisfaction.

Dogs can’t be left alone in the room, so while Tori descended to The Retreat Spa to sweat, soak and steam herself into serenity, I stayed behind, brewing tea and babysitting the hound. I can report that the bed was vast, the milk was in the fridge where milk ought to be, and the city outside hummed like a very faint tuning fork which despite the proximity to the high street, the sound of the outside world was not as intrusive as you’d think.

Dinner was at Colson’s, the restaurant that has cleverly folded art deco into something new. Dogs aren’t in the dining room, but the lounge bar next door is happy to accommodate them, and it feels far less like exile than you’d think. I ate the fish of the day: salmon grilled until the skin whispered into crispness, perched on potatoes with a crunch that should have been framed. Tori had pork belly, slow cooked until it surrendered, lying red wine jus. It was the sort of dish you resent sharing a forkful of and I did have pangs of dish envy.

Afterwards, we were allowed to wander up to Beckett’s Rooftop Bar despite it being closed, taking dessert with us like contraband. The city unfolded beneath us, all sunkissed roofs and glowing stone kept us company in the sunset as the manager came by to chat. This is what you want from a hotel: food that knows where it came from, staff who know why you came, and a view that makes you want to stay longer.

The next morning, breakfast in Colson’s was another reminder of the small rituals that hotels get right or wrong. Here, they get them right: strong coffee, decent bread, bacon with backbone, sausages with provenance. The only thing to note is that hot breakfasts need to be ordered before 9:30. You can order room service too if you want to eat at your leisure. We made it down just in time, though, and waddled out fortified to Cathedral Green.

Hotel Indigo Exeter pulls off what most hotels only pretend at: style without vanity and warmth without the syrupy chumminess. It feels effortless, lived-in, the sort of welcome you don’t have to decode. Best of all, it treats your dog not as baggage or a nuisance, but as part of the family, which, of course, he is

If you’re planning a city break with your four-legged companion, Exeter is a wonderful choice, and staying here makes it even better.