Clifton Park

Boston Park is Rotherham's first public park, just over eight hectares on the hill at the end of Boston Castle Grove off Moorgate, opened on 4 July 1876 to mark the centenary of American independence. The castle at the top is a hunting lodge of 1775 built for the Earl of Effingham and named for the Boston Tea Party, and it opens Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday from 11am to 3pm between April and September. The walk drops south out of the formal gardens into Canklow Woods, an ancient woodland of oak and birch on the valley side above the Rother, and climbs back up the far side. The park paths are surfaced; the woodland tracks are earth and get churned in winter.

Four and a half hectares of ponds, wetland and wildflower meadow bank beside the River Don on Sheffield Road, built on the site of the Seven Sisters steel foundry and doubling as part of Rotherham's flood alleviation scheme. Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust permits dogs but requires them to be kept on a lead. Twenty-three butterfly species have been recorded here along with damselflies and dragonflies, which is why the lead rule exists on a site this small. It is a short, flat, entirely urban circuit sandwiched between the A6178 and the river, useful as a leg-stretch rather than a day out.

A hotel on West Bawtry Road just off junction 33 of the M1, on the southern edge of Rotherham above the Don valley. It keeps a set of rooms specifically for guests with dogs at fifteen pounds per dog per night, and will put food bowls and waste bags in the room if you tell reception before you arrive. Dogs may use designated areas around the hotel including the open lobby, where there is table service, but they cannot come into every dining area and must stay in the room if you eat elsewhere. Ulley Country Park and Canklow Woods are both within four miles.