Dog-friendly Bolton Percy

A gentle mile and a bit along two firm linear paths, one grassy and one cinder, over the platform, goods yard and trackbed of the vanished Bolton Percy station, now two hectares of grassland, hedge and scrub full of butterflies; half an hour at most and utterly flat. There is a small car park at the end of the access lane, or walk out from Bolton Percy village half a mile away, and the reserve is best between May and July for wildflowers and birdsong. Yorkshire Wildlife Trust asks that dogs are kept on a lead throughout, the paths are permissive rather than rights of way, and you must not let a dog near the fences to the live railway line alongside; there is no water on site and the grassy path holds wet in winter.

Three and a half miles of lane and field path out of Bolton Percy, past the enormous fifteenth-century church that dwarfs its village, with barely ten metres of climbing and about an hour and a half on the move. Park considerately on the village street near the church; there is no useful bus, so this is one for the car, and it pairs neatly with the station nature reserve half a mile down the lane. Quiet single-track lanes make up a good share of the route so a steady dog can walk loose between fields, but the arable land is worked and stock appears in the pasture, and the cross-field paths go to heavy clay in winter which makes this a firm-ground walk rather than a January one.