Coatham Marsh circuit
Coatham Marsh is a Tees Valley Wildlife Trust reserve of lakes, reedbed and old ballast mounds squeezed between Redcar's western edge and the Warrenby steelworks land, and the circuit round the two main waters is a flat two miles. The Trust's instruction on the reserve is blunt and printed on its own page: keep dogs on a lead, clear up after your animals, do not disturb the wildlife. Start from the free Tod Point Road car park halfway along the Warrenby side; paths are surfaced on the south of the reserve and unsurfaced on the north, and several flood after heavy rain. It is a birdwatchers' reserve rather than a running-about one, so this is the walk for a wet January morning when the beach is blowing sand, not for a dog that needs to burn off an hour.
Coatham Sands
Coatham Sands is the long open beach running west from the Regent cinema past the dunes towards South Gare, and it falls entirely outside the summer exclusion zone, which stops at the Regent. That makes it the beach to use in Redcar between 1 May and 30 September, when the town frontage east of the cinema is closed to dogs and this stretch is not. There is no seasonal ban and no lead requirement here at any point in the year, only the borough-wide duty to keep a dog supervised and under control and to carry the means to pick up. Park on Majuba Road by the leisure centre or in the Coatham seafront car park; walk west and it empties out fast, and at low tide the flats run for the best part of a mile before the Gare breakwater.
Redcar Beach
Redcar's town sand runs below the Esplanade under the vertical pier, and at low water it is wide enough and hard enough to lose a dog on. The Redcar and Cleveland dog Public Spaces Protection Order excludes dogs from one stretch only, between the Regent cinema and the point where the Esplanade meets Graffenberg Street, and only from 1 May to 30 September; the council's own wording is that during those months dogs are still welcome to be walked on a lead along the Esplanade itself. From 1 October to 30 April the whole beach is open with no lead requirement, and the sand west of the Regent towards Coatham is outside the zone all year round. Enforcement is a £100 fixed penalty on the spot with a maximum court fine of £1,000, and the order runs to 30 June 2028. Parking is on the Esplanade and at the Coatham end, both pay and display, and both fill by mid-morning on a hot Sunday.