Dog-friendly Penrith

Five and three quarter miles and about two and a half hours on almost flat ground, out of Penrith along the Eamont to the red sandstone keep of Brougham Castle and back by Brougham Hall's craft yards. It starts in Penrith town centre, ten minutes from the station on the West Coast main line, and the town's Sandgate and Bluebell Lane car parks are paid but inexpensive. The riverside path is level, shaded and gives constant water access, and dogs are welcome in the outer grounds of Brougham Hall and in its courtyard cafes; the field paths between are grazed by cattle in summer, there are two narrow squeeze stiles, and a quarter mile of the return uses the verge of a busy lane.

Two and three quarter miles and an hour and a quarter, a hundred metres of climb through the beech plantation to the little pyramid-roofed beacon tower above the town, with the north Pennines on one side and the Lakeland fells on the other. It starts at the Cold Springs community nature reserve on Beacon Edge, where there is free roadside parking for about a dozen cars; from the town centre it is a fifteen-minute walk uphill instead. Most of the route is inside enclosed woodland where a dog can be off the lead, and the reserve at the bottom has open grassland, but the woods are shared with local dog walkers and the summit clearing gives out onto grazed fields - the lead goes on at the top gate.

A grass-roofed visitor centre built into a hillside on the edge of Penrith, with independent shops, a deli, a cinema and a large cafe: the wet-day answer for the northern Lakes. Dogs are allowed in the foyer, the deli, all the shops and the lower booths of the cafe, but not in the gallery, the design shop or the childrens area.