Dog-friendly East Riding of Yorkshire

A big brick roadhouse on Cottingham Road opposite the university campus, and one of the few Hull pubs that puts its dog policy in writing rather than leaving it to the doorman. Dogs are welcome in every room, not just a corner of the bar, and the pub keeps water bowls and treats behind the counter. There is a beer garden at the back for warm afternoons. It sits within a few minutes of Pearson Park and the Cottingham Road end of the Hull to Hornsea rail trail, so it works as a stop rather than a destination.

A west Hull estate local on Willerby Road, close enough to Anlaby and Willerby to be the nearest pub for a lot of the Haltemprice villages. Its own site states that dogs are welcome in the whole pub, inside and out, rather than being confined to a bar area. Food runs from noon to 8pm every day and the bar opens from 11am. There is outside seating, and it is a short drive from Springhead Park and the west Hull green corridor.

A town pub on Market Place in the middle of Hornsea, about ten minutes' walk back from the promenade. The pub's own site says it welcomes well-behaved dogs into the whole pub, and that it keeps a range of doggy goodies including water bowls and treats, so there is no bar-only rule to work around. Inside it is a straightforward drinking pub with cask ales, a pool table, a dartboard and a fireplace, and there is a beer garden and a car park behind. It is open from 11am seven days and there is no kitchen listed, so treat it as a drink and a sit down after the beach rather than a meal.

A small local on Baxter Gate in the middle of Hedon, the old Holderness market town that sits between Hull and the Humber bank at Paull. It serves cask ale and home-cooked food and has a beer garden behind. The pub's own site describes dog-friendly spaces inside and out, so dogs are not restricted to the garden. Hedon is East Riding of Yorkshire, not Hull, and the Hedon Haven and Humber bank paths start about ten minutes' walk south of the pub.

On Market Green in the middle of Cottingham, which claims to be England's largest village and is East Riding rather than Hull, this is a straightforward local with a fully stocked bar and a beer garden. The pub's own site says well-behaved dogs are welcome in the bar area, and that it keeps water bowls and treats for them; the wording is specific to the bar, so do not assume the dining side. Food runs Tuesday to Sunday, from noon, with the pub closed on Mondays. Cottingham's Memorial Gardens and Hallgate are a two-minute walk away.

A seventeenth-century coaching inn on Cowgate looking over Welton's village green and the beck, a mile and a half up from Brough station and the obvious finish for a walk into Welton Dale. The pub runs a dedicated dog-friendly page and states dogs are welcome in the bar and the beer garden, with the patio and the space under the bar tables offered as somewhere for a dog to settle. The restaurant side is not included in that welcome, so ask before you take a table on the dining side. The green outside has a duck pond, which is not fenced, and the lane up towards the dale carries occasional farm traffic.

The Canal and River Trust towpath west out of Goole along the Knottingley and Goole line of the Aire and Calder Navigation, dead flat and traffic-free the whole way to the swing bridge at Rawcliffe Bridge. It leaves the canal basin behind the docks, passes under the railway and then runs between the water and open arable carr land with barn owl boxes on the poles and swans on the cut. There is no shade at all once you are clear of the town, and the Trust asks that dogs are not allowed to swim in the canal, so a water bottle matters more here than usual. Locks, moorings and the swing bridge are the pinch points where the Trust asks for a short lead.

Six hundred acres of unfenced common pasture rising straight out of the top of town, five minutes from Saturday Market. The route climbs from the Westwood Road cattle grid across open grass to the stump of Black Mill, cuts north-west into Burton Bushes (the last surviving fragment of old wood-pasture on the common), then returns along the north edge and down the Cinder Footpath, the metalled path named in the Pasture Masters' own byelaws that runs from Sterne's Corner on York Road to Westwood Road. There are no fences and no gates once you are on, so a dog can run, but cattle and sheep are turned out from April to December and two unfenced public roads cross the common. The Pasture Masters' byelaw 14 asks only for proper control, not a lead, but a golf course and a racecourse occupy parts of the grass and neither is somewhere to let a dog loose.

At 130 acres this is Hull's largest park and the city's default dog walk, an 1887 Victorian layout off Holderness Road with the Ferens boating lake at its heart, a model yacht pond, the Khyber Pass rock folly and its waterfall, and long tarmac carriage drives that stay walkable in winter. This is Hull City Council land, a unitary authority entirely separate from East Riding, and Hull's rules are its own. The whole park is open to dogs except the enclosed children's play area and splash pad, where the council's page says only assistance dogs are allowed; the free Animal Education Centre with its farm and exotic stock is a further reason to have a lead to hand. The park is unfenced from the surrounding streets, gates open at 8am and it closes at dusk on a sliding seasonal timetable.

A worked-out chalk quarry on the cliff above the Humber, now a 21-hectare local nature reserve of woodland, meadow, ponds and bare white quarry faces, joined to the tidal foreshore directly beneath the north tower of the Humber Bridge. The reserve is East Riding of Yorkshire Council land, not Hull's, and the council's own page asks only that a dog is kept under close control and picked up after, so the woods and meadow trails are the nearest thing to off-lead ground within reach of Hull. The route drops through the quarry that locals call Little Switzerland, comes out on the foreshore path under the bridge deck, runs east on gravel past the Old Black Mill and climbs back up through the meadow. There is no livestock, but the foreshore itself is a separate council site with a lead rule, and the Humber tide comes in fast over soft mud.

Kilnsea Wetlands is a Yorkshire Wildlife Trust reserve of thirty-five hectares of freshwater and saline pools, islands, spits and wet grassland, made by the Trust behind the sea bank north of Kilnsea village. The Trust's own instruction for the reserve is that dogs must be on a lead, and this is a wader roost rather than a running-about field, so expect to hold the lead the whole way round. Paths are flat grass and turn to mud through the winter; the car park is on Easington Road, on the left after you come up Long Bank and before you reach Kilnsea village. The circuit takes you past the hides overlooking the lagoons and out to the sea bank at Beacon Ponds, where the shingle and the North Sea are on the other side. Autumn and winter high tides are when the redshank, godwit and dunlin come in.

Millington Wood is a fifty-two acre Local Nature Reserve and SSSI managed by East Riding of Yorkshire Council's Countryside Access Team, sat at the mouth of the chalk dry valleys known as Millington Dales. There are no public rights of way inside the wood, only permissive paths, and the council's own line is that you can bring your dog provided you pick up after it and keep it under close control. From the small car park on Wood Gate the route climbs the main ride to the viewpoint, then follows the single-track dale road up onto Millington Pastures, one of the last stretches of unploughed chalk grassland in the Wolds, before dropping back down the valley. The dales are bone dry with no beck and no ponds, so carry water. Sheep and cattle are grazed on the pastures and the fields either side of the road are not fenced from the verge.