Dog-friendly Craster

Above Craster harbour since 1847, and still the place for crab sandwiches and kipper pate after the Dunstanburgh walk. Dogs are welcome in the bar only: not in the restaurant seating, and not in the beer garden either, which is the opposite of what most people assume. Get there early on a summer Sunday or you will not get a bar table at all.

A six and a half mile linear half-day of about three hours along the least-walked stretch of the Northumberland Coast Path, past Cullernose Point, Howdiemont Sands and Sugar Sands to the fishermen’s village of Boulmer. Start at the Craster quarry car park; there is no bus back on Sundays, so either arrange a lift from Boulmer or accept a thirteen-mile day. Long empty beaches with no seasonal dog restriction and burns to drink from, but the cliff path is unfenced above Cullernose, several fields hold cattle, and the last mile into Boulmer crosses grazing where the fixed penalty for a dog off lead near stock is the farmer’s to report.

The best-known walk on this coast: four and a half miles and a little over two hours, level turf out to the castle, then sand round Embleton Bay and farm tracks back over Dunstan Square. Start from the Northumberland Coast car park in the old quarry at Craster, pay-and-display and the only real parking in the village, which is full by ten on any decent summer day. The clifftop grazing means leads on for the cattle between Craster and the castle, but Embleton Bay is dogs-all-year sand with no council restriction, and there are two gates rather than stiles on the inland return.

Four and a half miles in two hours, south from the harbour along low cliffs to the basalt columns of Cullernose Point, then inland by Howick Hall and field paths back to the village. The start is the quarry car park at Craster; it is pay-and-display and the busiest on the coast, so an early arrival or a weekday is worth planning for. Fulmars nest on the Cullernose cliffs and the path runs unfenced along the top, so leads on for that half-mile, then cattle and sheep on the fields inland; the Howick Burn gives a drink and the whinstone shore below has no seasonal dog ban.

Set back at Dunstan, half a mile inland from Craster harbour, with a garden, a car park you can actually use and a family-and-dog welcome stated on the door. A useful base if the harbour village itself is full. The inn describes dog-friendly policies for all guests but its rooms pages do not spell out the bedroom rules.

A gaunt fourteenth-century curtain wall on a headland, reached only on foot: 1.3 miles from Craster across working farmland with no road anywhere near it. English Heritage lists it among its dog-friendly properties, with dogs on leads throughout. The fields hold cattle and sheep in most seasons, so the lead is not a formality here.