Dog-friendly Topsham

A handsome old customs house on Topsham's quay, facing the Exe mudflats and the bird hides beyond. It is a dog-friendly pub and restaurant throughout, so you can stay for dinner rather than a quick half, and the quayside square outside is a natural stop off the Exe Estuary Trail.

An easy three miles of about an hour and a quarter, out along the Goat Walk above the Exe, round the sea wall to the RSPB viewing platform at Bowling Green Marsh and back through the Dutch-gabled streets of Topsham, all on roads and hard flat paths. Park in Holman Way in the middle of the town, which is paid and busy on market days, or take the branch line train from Exeter which stops five minutes from the start. Dogs need to be on the lead for most of this one: the Goat Walk is a narrow raised path with the tide on one side and gardens on the other, the marsh is a nationally important roost for waders and wildfowl where dogs must stay on the lane and out of the reserve, and the hides are not for dogs at all.

Three miles there and back along the last reach of the Exeter Ship Canal to the Turf Hotel at the mouth of the estuary, an hour and a quarter dead flat on a wide grass and gravel towpath with the Exminster Marshes on one side and the tide on the other. The catch is the crossing: the towpath is on the west bank, so from Topsham you take the seasonal ferry from the steps below the Passage House, and if it is not running you must drive round by Exminster and walk down the lane instead. Dogs have it easy here with no stiles, no traffic and no livestock on the towpath itself, but the marsh either side is grazed and full of overwintering birds, so keep to the path and on a lead in winter, and the canal is deep with sheer sides throughout.