Dog-friendly Millom

Out along the sand west from the Haverigg beach car park with Black Combe filling the view inland, then back through the marram dunes and along the Haverigg pool into the village. At low water the sand is firm and enormous and a dog can run for a mile without meeting a road; at high water the walk is on the dune paths instead, which are soft going. There is no seasonal dog ban on this beach. The play area at Haverigg is the one place on the route dogs may not go.

A circuit of the lagoon at RSPB Hodbarrow, the flooded pit of the old Hodbarrow iron mine, held back from the Duddon by a massive outer sea barrier. The main path in from the Mainsgate Road car park is rolled stone, firm and wide enough for a wheelchair, and runs a mile and a half to the hide; beyond that the barrier gives an open walk to the lighthouse with the estuary on one side and the lagoon on the other. Terns, ringed plovers and oystercatchers breed on the shingle here and natterjack toads use the pools, which is why the RSPB requires leads throughout. There are no toilets on site, the nearest being a mile away at Haverigg.

A town circuit from the station and Market Square out through Millom Park on St George's Road, then north across the fields to the fourteenth-century pele tower of Millom Castle and the old parish church of Holy Trinity, which stand on their own a mile from the modern town. Field paths back down to Mainsgate Road complete the loop. It is short and mostly level and it is the walk to do when the tide is in and the sands are gone. The park itself is a dogs-on-lead area and its play area is closed to dogs entirely.

East out of Millom along the line of the old ironworks tramway to the ruined quay at Borwick Rails, then south along the Duddon estuary shore below the Hodbarrow embankment. This is the estuary side rather than the open sea: mud, saltmarsh and shingle, with Kirkby and the Furness fells across the water and a great deal of birdlife on the tide. The shore is soft in places and the channel fills fast, so keep a dog off the flats on a rising tide. Turn at the Hodbarrow embankment and come back the same way.