Dog-friendly walks in Womersley

The short round the parish council publishes for people who have twenty minutes rather than four hours. From the Courtyard car park you walk to the church, take the footpath down the side of the graveyard, keep to the left-hand edge of the field, and at the bottom corner turn left; fifty yards on you come out at the end of Cow Lane, and turning left down Cow Lane and left again at the bottom brings you back to the start. The council's own warning is worth repeating plainly: this can be a muddy walk, and the field-edge section is heavy clay from autumn through spring. The parish play field is just off Cow Lane, and beyond the railway crossing the farm tracks run out into open country if you want to extend it as an out-and-back.

The long round the parish council itself sets out: about seven and a half miles through the farmed country south of Womersley, taking in Northfield Lane and the Blue Lagoon dive lake, Little Smeaton, Kirk Smeaton and Walden Stubbs before returning past St Martin's church. It is flat arable and pasture with field-edge paths, farm tracks and stretches of single-track lane, and it crosses working land, so the Countryside Code rule applies: keep the dog on a lead or in sight, do not let it stray off the line of the path, and lead it around livestock. The parish council warns plainly that it can be a muddy walk, which is fair for anything between October and April here. Two shorter versions start from the Courtyard car park and drop down the side of the churchyard to Cow Lane, one a fifteen-minute village loop and the other an out-and-back on the farm tracks beyond the railway.