Bamburgh Beach

The great red-sandstone block on its whinstone crag, still lived in by the Armstrong family and open to visitors most of the year. Dogs on short leads are welcome across the grounds and in the Victorian Stables and Tack Room Takeaway, with water bowls dotted about the site. The State Rooms, Clock Tower Cafe and the aviation museum are for assistance dogs only.

Five and a half miles in about three hours, out along the sand and rock under the castle to the lighthouse at Blackrocks Point, round Budle Point to the mudflats at Waren Mill and back inland over the golf links. Start from the pay-and-display car park on Links Road in the village, which is the largest in Bamburgh and still full by mid-morning in August. Northumberland has no seasonal dog ban on this beach, so the sand is off-lead all year; the return crosses grazed fields and a working golf course, and the Budle Bay flats hold roosting wildfowl that a loose dog will scatter.

Seven and a half miles with barely 70 metres of climbing, three hours of it, south down four miles of open sand to Seahouses harbour and back on the dune path and field edges behind. It starts at the Links Road car park in Bamburgh, and if that is full the alternative is to run the walk in reverse from the big pay-and-display behind Seahouses seafront. The whole beach is free of any seasonal dog restriction, so it is off-lead sand nearly the entire way out, with fresh water where the Hoppen Burn crosses the beach; the inland return passes through sheep fields and along a short stretch of the B1340.