Dog-friendly Barrow in Furness

A large Greene King pub on Abbey Road at the north end of Barrow, ten minutes' walk from Barrow Park and on the road out to Furness Abbey. Its own dog-friendly page states that all are welcome at the Strawberry, that the pub loves dogs and that there is usually a treat or two waiting for them. Sport is shown, food is pub standards, and it opens from late morning through to midnight on Fridays and Saturdays. In a town with very little published on dogs, this is one of the few places that puts it in writing.

A historic street-corner pub on Oxford Street in central Barrow, a short walk from the town hall and the Walney bridge road. Greene King's own dog-friendly page for the Victoria states that the pub loves dogs, keeps cosy surroundings and usually has a treat waiting for them. Opening runs from late morning to midnight at weekends and to eleven through the week. It is a useful stop on the way back from a Walney or Sandscale walk, since almost nothing else in the town publishes a dog policy at all.

Three miles of shingle and saltmarsh out along a causeway and the length of a bare pebble island east of Roa Island, with terns and ringed plovers on the ridges and Piel Castle across the channel. The dog rule here is absolute rather than advisory: Cumbria Wildlife Trust bars all dogs except assistance dogs from the island between 15 April and 1 August while the birds are nesting, and restricts everyone to the designated paths from 1 April to 15 August with Slitch Ridge closed. Out of that window dogs are permitted. The reserve can be cut off for a few hours around high water, so check the tide before you set out, and the causeway track is muddy and slippery.

A wild, wind-scoured walk up the west shore of Walney from the car park at Earnse Bay to the national nature reserve about three quarters of a mile north, where dune heath, hay meadow and saltmarsh run out to the northern tip of the island. Three coloured waymarked routes loop through the reserve. Natural England requires dogs on a short lead of no more than two metres from 1 March to 31 July because of the ground-nesting birds, and the dune pools are breeding sites for natterjack toads, one of Britain's rarest amphibians. There is no wheeled access into the reserve itself, and nothing at all in the way of shelter once you are out on the dunes.

The best dog walk in Furness by a distance: a National Trust national nature reserve of high dunes and slacks at Roanhead, with new boardwalks dropping from the dune tops onto a wide sand beach looking across the Duddon estuary to Black Combe. The Trust's own access statement says dogs and assistance dogs are welcome on site, asking for close control generally and leads through the bird breeding season. The dune slacks hold a quarter of Britain's natterjack toads, which is why sticking to the path network matters in spring. The Trust also asks visitors to keep off the inter-tidal area of the estuary, where the channels are deep and the tide comes round behind you.