Dog-friendly Ulverston

A vegetarian cafe inside Conishead Priory on the coast road south of Ulverston, open daily from eleven to five with last orders at twenty to five. The centre states that your four-legged friend is welcome, and provides water bowls and towels; there is a lounge next to the cafe where you can have lunch with a dog, plus outdoor seating under cover. Dogs must be on a lead here as they must be everywhere in the grounds. It is the obvious stop after the woodland and shore walk in the priory grounds, and the whole place shuts from mid-July to mid-August for the summer festival.

Seventy acres of gardens, lake, streams and woodland behind the gothic pile of Conishead Priory on the coast road south of Ulverston, with paths running down through the trees to a quiet shingle and sand shore on Morecambe Bay. The grounds are open from dawn to dusk with free parking, and the Buddhist centre that owns them states that dogs must be kept on lead at all times, with bins provided round the property. Dogs are welcome in the cafe as well as the grounds, and water bowls and towels are put out for them. The centre closes to visitors from mid-July to mid-August for its summer festival, so check before making the trip in high summer.

Five and a quarter miles and about two and a quarter hours, climbing the grassy hill to the lighthouse-shaped monument for the view over Morecambe Bay and then following the old ship canal out to its sea lock at Canal Foot. It starts in Ulverston town centre - the Brewery Street and Buxton Place car parks are paid but cheap, and the Furness line station is a five-minute walk from the canal towpath. The towpath is the reason to bring a dog here: a mile and a half of dead-level traffic-free gravel with water on one side, and the estuary shore at the far end. Hoad Hill itself is grazed pasture with sheep, and the tidal sands beyond the sea lock are dangerous - do not let a dog run onto them.

A very short level walk on the edge of Ulverston, four hundred metres of footpath running the length of a narrow strip of woodland with no exit at the far end, so you come back the way you went. Cumbria Wildlife Trust publishes the reserve as dogs on a lead. There are no grazing animals and no gates to fight with, which makes it a genuinely easy ten minutes for an old or a recovering dog. There is no parking at the reserve entrance, so walk in from the town or the canal.

An old ferry inn at Canal Foot, at the seaward end of the Ulverston canal where it meets the Leven estuary, with the sands and the Cartmel shore straight out of the window. The hotel states that well behaved dogs are welcome to stay overnight for a small charge, and the towpath walk from Ulverston to the door is one of the flattest, most reliable dog walks in Furness. The charge is not published as a figure, so confirm it when you book, and the hotel does not publish which internal areas dogs may use. Canal Foot is a dead-end lane past the works, so the parking is at the inn itself.